


Fixations

by FSTP



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Baseless Headcanons, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical "Death", Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Hate Sex, Obsessive Behavior, Rough Sex, Torture, extreme violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 87,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FSTP/pseuds/FSTP
Summary: Yui has very little patience for stalkers, especially ones like Ghost Face. She should have remembered that ‘stalker’ was only half of his job description.When taking a stand against him in a trial turns her into his newest obsession, she finds herself struggling to keep him from taking things to a point of no return - and risking everything she holds dear in the fog in the process.
Relationships: Others mentioned or implied, Yui Kimura/Claudette Morel, Yui Kimura/Danny "Jed Olsen" Johnson | The Ghost Face
Comments: 69
Kudos: 157





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Should update Sundays.

None of them had ever found a way to figure out how to tell what killer they were going to face in a trial, or how long they’d have to wait until they saw the same one again. 

They’d counted. There were, at this point, close to twenty killers; with only a few more survivors than that sitting around the campfire, it meant that even if all but a few of them were in a trial, only five or so killers could ever be in a trial at a time. Sometimes they’d hardly see one or two for trial after trial, and then suddenly they were all over the place, killing everyone with wild abandon. 

Was there a hierarchy? Did they have to fight for the chance to get into a trial? Did they make offerings the way the survivors sometimes did, trying to curry favor with their monstrous benefactor instead of trying to find new tools and supplies and safety? 

It could have been anything. Nothing they did ever seemed to make a difference. They could tie together plants and flowers, dig up fragments of bone, find sealed pouches or rotting branches in trials and toss them into the campfire with a wish or a prayer or a plea, watch them burn white and crumble into ash, and … it didn’t seem to make any difference. The killers were on their own schedule. 

Though as Yui had learned, most of the killers didn’t seem to care who they hunted. Sometimes they fixated on one person in a trial, and by the next it was someone else. Sometimes they went for revenge after a particularly nasty prior trial; she knew Trapper had a hell of an obsession with gutting anyone who got away from him. On the whole, though, they just killed whoever was closest. 

There were exceptions. Michael would ignore someone standing right in front of him if Laurie was anywhere on the trial grounds, and Krueger would make beeline for Quentin if he had the opportunity. She’d learned those two pairs had come from the same places, had history together, so it made sense, although Dwight told her that, as far as he’d ever known, all of them came from movies. They shouldn’t - _couldn’t_ \- have been real. 

They were real here, and that was all that mattered. And while some of the killers could hold a grudge against someone that got away or hurt them, it never really seemed to last. 

The same couldn’t be said of the survivors. 

Yui had a lot of grudges here. She’d always had trouble with that. It was stupid, she knew, especially considering her line of work - she had to focus on getting to the finish line, _not_ on tripping up someone who tried to slash her tires or cut the gas line or sabotage the brakes on her bike three minutes before a race started. But when it was justified, she couldn’t _not_ feel a sting of hatred every time she saw them, and here, that had festered into recklessness against killers. 

Things were even worse when her friends were involved, though. And that wasn’t new, either. Anybody who laid a hand on her gang back in the real world was facing a wrench to the jaw if they were lucky. Seeing the people she’d learned to trust and depend on here getting injured, sacrificed, openly _murdered_ in front of her - it pissed her off so much she almost couldn’t keep herself under control. 

Not that there was much she could do to vent it, but even if they couldn’t grab a weapon and fight back, they could take revenge in other, smaller ways. She did what she could, and let the anger keep her on-edge during trials. Anger, after all, was better than the nonstop terror and constant, creeping despair that would have been consuming her otherwise. 

It kept her _sane_. But so did other people. 

The campfire was burning as brightly as ever when uneven footsteps got her attention. There were ten of them around the campfire right now, and as she watched, flickering figures in the darkness revealed themselves to be four people from a trial just ended. Claudette was one of them, and as she stumbled into the light, Yui knew things hadn’t gone well. 

“Here. C’mon, sit down.” She shifted a little to make extra room, and Claudette sat down, hard. She wasn’t injured. They never were, after trials; letting them stay hurt would have been _counterproductive_ , Yui thought sourly. But she didn’t look good, and once she’d sat down she let out a long, shaky breath and hunched forward. 

Yui liked Claudette. She didn’t talk much, but it was because of shyness and sometimes awkwardness, not out of some kind of deluded idea of being appealingly demure. She was a good person. She tried to do the right thing. She put a lot of effort into maintaining their medkits, making salves and things that helped more often than not. She apologized a little too much for Yui’s liking, but she didn’t needlessly antagonize people, either. 

She’d also been here longer than almost anyone else. Being here at all took its toll on people; it was wearing down on her more than some of the others. 

“Bad trial?” Yui asked, already knowing the answer. 

“Could’ve been worse,” Claudette mumbled, reaching up to feel the frames of her glasses with her fingers. 

“Uh huh.” A glance around the campfire saw David grumbling to anyone who would listen, Meg mindlessly turning a stick over and over in her fingers, and Laurie lying on her back on an empty log, one arm over her eyes. “I guess everything could have been on fire. Who was it this time?” 

“Ghost Face.” 

Yui had a special hatred for Ghost Face. 

Killers were bad enough. Insane or bloodthirsty or just assholes - she hated them, but she could deal with them. _He_ took things to another level, a nasty, _personal_ one. He followed them in silence, watched them, listened to them, learned about them. He _stalked_ them, finding out their secrets, digging into their vulnerabilities, and then killing them like it was all a fun little game. 

Stalkers made her blood boil. Every time she saw him, her hands itched to beat his face in through that stupid mask he wore. Possibly his only saving grace to her was that he didn’t stalk the women any more particularly than the men, but even then, it was a single snowflake of being bearable on an entire mountain of unconditional hatred. 

She put a hand on Claudette’s shoulder, trying to offer her some comfort without squeezing too hard as her muscles ached to attack someone who wasn’t even there. 

“He got you all,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Claudette nodded. 

“Laurie almost got out.” She sighed again and pushed her glasses against her face. “I think. He took my glasses.” 

“He what?” 

“Took them while I was down,” she continued. “And then broke them. And laughed at me.” 

Yui said nothing, but it took a force of effort to keep her hand from squeezing tight enough to bruise. 

“I managed okay without them, but we were at the temple, so I couldn’t … I didn’t see him coming next time.” 

“That fucking asshole.” Yui grit her teeth against the string of swears that built up after that, knowing there was no point in letting them out unless the man in question was around to hear them. 

“I’ll drink to that,” David said from the other side of the fire. 

“This really is a stupid game to him, isn’t it?” She shook her head and rubbed her hand against Claudette’s back. “I’ll get him back for that. I promise.” 

Claudette glanced over at her with a weak little smile. 

“I appreciate it, but … how?” 

“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. Try and cave his skull in with a pallet, maybe.” 

Or knock him down with a locker door, or find something _really_ sharp and wait until he tried to carry her somewhere, and then … but she knew, in the end, it wouldn’t make a difference. He wouldn’t understand why, or if he did, care about it. At best she’d be satisfied with the idea of _getting revenge_. 

Knowing that only burned her more. She let out a huff of breath and tried to push all thoughts of him and his attitude out of her mind, focusing instead on helping Claudette get her head back together after another inevitable, soul-scarring death.  
  


* * *

  
Two trials later - two trials _for her_ later - she got her chance. 

It was Jeff yelling, his voice ringing out over the endless rustling of the cornfields, that told her something was wrong. She hadn’t heard any telltale sounds. Inhuman shrieks. A ringing bell. A roar. Thundering footsteps. The _snap_ of a trap. A lullaby. That wasn’t necessarily the sign of anyone specific - even the most bloodthirsty killers in the mess could be stealthy sometimes - but the total, abject silence put her on edge. 

A generator later it was Dwight, just at the edge of her vision, going from standing upright to being flat on the ground. Nothing around him had moved. She crouched behind a broken wall and peered out at him, unwilling to get closer until she knew who she was dealing with. 

For a second she thought whoever it was had run off to chase down someone else, and then the shadows moved, and suddenly she saw the shape of a man in black and gray looming over Dwight. 

Ghost Face. 

She almost ran out at him. It wouldn’t have been a distraction tactic; it was just the raw force of revenge in her that wanted to see him bloody and, if possible, in pieces. But she managed to hold herself still, knowing that the second she tried anything, all her strength would fail her. 

It was _infuriating_. Yui ground her teeth together as she watched him heft Dwight like the man weighed nothing and carry him off toward a hook. 

“It’s Ghost Face,” she told Kate when she found her at a generator a few minutes later. Kate glanced at her, then back at the machine. 

“You sure?” 

“Positive.” 

“Damn.” She wrenched something into place and scowled. “I hate tryin’ to look over my shoulder all the time. I can’t do this right if I’m not watching it.” 

“Just do what you can.” Yui glanced behind herself, then leaned around to look behind Kate. Everything looked empty. “And run for it if you don’t feel safe.” 

“Easy enough to say. He got anyone yet?” 

“Jeff’s hurt. Dwight’s on a hook. I think Jeff’s got him, so we should finish this up and - ” 

She _felt_ it, rather than heard or saw it. Like a spider crawling up along her spine, a prickling of dread that made her want to shudder. Fear gripped her for just long enough to see the expression on Kate’s face change to one of mute horror. 

The shadow came from behind her, but she was already moving, stumbling as Kate tried to bolt with her. The knife just barely missed, hissing as it grazed her hair. She darted off to one side and tried to choke back the onrush of absolute terror being attacked always, _always_ dropped on her, dead certain he was after her. 

But a few seconds later a scream told her she was wrong. Yui slid to a halt and turned around, trying to see anything through the endless corn or on either side of the looming farmhouse behind her. No, he wasn’t after her … yet. So maybe she had an opportunity. 

She made her way across the trial grounds, slipping between trees and around rocks. Half-walls littered the grounds, and there were still a few pallets left that she could see. 

One had blood on it. Yui stared at it for a while, then grabbed it and pulled it back up, so it was standing on its edge again. She thought she could hear footsteps nearby, frantic breathing, the rustle of cloth and the creak of leather, and she peered around the edge of the pallet to see Kate running back in her direction. 

Without a word she motioned Kate _this way!_ And Kate, clutching at a bleeding arm, wasn’t in any mood to argue. Yui ducked to the side and pressed her back flat against the wall as Kate ran through, waited two seconds, and then slammed the pallet down as hard as she could. 

It hit something. She heard a snarl of pain and unsteady footsteps. It was promising. She stepped away from the wall and stood a little distance from the other side of the pallet. 

Ghost Face was trying to get his balance again; it had been one hell of a hit. Yui folded her arms over her chest and waited for him to see her; when he did, he watched her for a moment, apparently as surprised by her presence as her actions. 

“Not going to try and blind me?” he asked, his voice bright and edged by an audible sneer. 

“Do you see a flashlight?” she snapped. He gave her a long look and set one foot on the pallet, making it creak dangerously. 

“Why stick around, then? In a hurry to get back to your little campfire?” 

“Just trying to see if I can figure out if there’s any part of you that _isn’t_ an asshole.” 

“There are _some_ parts.” He leaned down hard. The wood underfoot groaned, cracked, and finally gave way. “They’re all much worse, though. Want to learn about them?” 

“Not even a little.” Yui glared at him, refusing to move. And that seemed to put him off; he kept watching her, the hand gripping his knife shifting slightly. “‘Asshole’ was me being generous. I _know_ you’re worse. You’re subhuman.” 

“I’m _better_ than human,” he said, and when she laughed at that, he took a few steps forward. 

“You’re garbage. You’re total dogshit.” Fear, cold and creeping, worked its way through her as he approached. She tried to ignore it. This wasn’t even just her getting a shot at him - she was keeping his attention, letting the others do the work they needed to do to escape in one piece. “Anyone who likes killing as much as you do is worthless.” 

He came close. Too close. Yui refused to back up. If she took one step, she’d try to run - and he’d stab her without having to reach. He wasn’t that much taller than her, but she still had to tilt her head up to glare at him, and that just irked her more. 

“Wow,” he said, bright and brittle, “you really _are_ eager to get back, aren’t you? What’s the rush? Want to spend some extra time with that pretty little someone of yours?” 

“Maybe,” she spat. “Why? Does that make you jealous? I bet you couldn’t get a girlfriend if you were the last man on earth. I bet anyone would shoot themselves rather than spend ten seconds with y - ” 

The knife shot out, faster than she could see it; automatically she stumbled back, just barely avoiding it, and then he kicked at her knee with a heavy boot. She went down and he followed. 

She knew right away that he was fucking with her. He wasn’t stabbing, wasn’t trying to incapacitate her and find a hook; every time the blade hit her it was a thin, shallow, stinging cut, one that hurt and bled but wasn’t life-threatening. He dug a knee into her hip to hold her still and swiped at her face. She tried to buck, tried to roll away, tried to force him off, but he had her mostly pinned … 

… and every time she tried to hit him, it didn’t _work_. That was the problem here. That had always been the problem here. Yui knew she was more than capable of holding her own in a fight, but that didn’t mean anything now. Every kick only made it halfway. Every sharp elbow grazed off him ineffectually. Even when she tried to bring a fist down on his head she _felt_ her arm weaken, her fingers uncurl from a fist; her hand landed on his hood with barely any weight at all. 

They were crippled, in a trial. There was no way to get around it. 

But as she glared up at him, listening to him snicker behind the mask, she suddenly wondered if there weren’t loopholes. 

Her hand was on the edge of his hood where it met his mask. As he brought the knife up again, this time for what was probably a much harder strike, she closed her fingers around the leather and _yanked_ , trying to pull it down over his face. 

Ghost Face jerked back at that, the knife stuttering on its way toward her shoulder. His free hand flew up to try and snatch at hers. Yui clenched her jaw and kept the grip hard, trying to pull, trying to _get it off_ , but the hood was attached to the rest of his outfit; she’d have to cut the damn thing off to get her hands on it. She brought up her other hand and scrabbled wildly at his mask instead. Was it part of the outfit, too? Stitched or glued directly to the hood? Or was it - 

He reeled back when her fingers found the edge of the mask. Slick plastic gave way to smooth cloth that definitely wasn’t leather. The knife came down hard, slashed at her arm, but by then she had both hands on it, fingers curling around the softer cloth and plastic. Yui braced herself and put all the strength she had into trying to yank it off. 

There was a moment of resistance, and then it came free. 

The force of it flung them apart, though part of that was her trying to get away and him trying to put distance between them. Yui scrambled back again, watching him, the mask and its attached ski mask-style hood clutched hard in her fingers. 

He was kneeling in the remains of the pallet. The hand with the knife was on the ground; the other was clamped over his face. Slowly, he looked up at her. 

He wasn’t too bad looking, she thought later. A little pale, a little gaunt, but attractive enough. High cheekbones. A jaw sharp enough to cut with, slightly stubbled. Hair so dark brown it was almost black, a little long and wild from the struggle to get his mask off. One eye decidedly lighter than the other. Maybe if he’d smiled, and hadn’t been a deranged murderer, he might have actually been worth a shot, even by her standards. 

But the look he was giving her just then was one of absolute insane rage, worse than anything she’d ever seen in her life. 

In seconds he was on her again. The first cut got her throat, slashing her vocal cords so she couldn’t scream. The second was in her chest, straight down through her ribs to her lungs. So was the third. And the fourth. And every stab after that. 

Even if she’d been able to, there was no room to fight back now. When she tried to reach up to stop him he hit her arm away so hard it left an imprint in the dirt. It wasn’t the kill they knew him for; this was just fury, sheer hatred, his own revenge against hers. 

The pain and lack of air bore down on her. Blood filled her vision, either just because she was dying or because the force of his stabs made it splatter that high; his face was already covered in it. Darkness crept in. The world around her went cold. 

The last thing she saw was him ripping the mask out of her hand and watching her bleed out, his chest and shoulders heaving, his teeth bared and clenched tight. 

She wondered if she’d get the same reaction if she managed to get the mask off any of the other killers. Would Trapper cut her head off? Would those kids do exactly what he’d just done? The idea floated dreamily through her head as she stared into the campfire that faded back into her vision. 

Someone was saying her name. Yui looked around into Kate’s face, and then snapped back into focus. 

“What?” 

“Are you okay?” Kate’s expression was one of real concern, moreso than normal. 

“Uh … yeah. I’m fine. Just trying to get my head back together after that.” 

“Are you sure? Because when I found you, you were … ” 

Dead. Really, really dead, Yui thought, but didn’t say. 

“Yeah, I’m sure. I just pissed him off is all.” 

“If you say so.” Kate pressed her lips into a thin line for a second. “What did you do? He got Jeff and Dwight, and he didn’t even say anything.” 

“Oh, uh … ” Yui turned to stare back into the campfire. Her head was still a little fuzzy, making her words distant, unconcerned. Careless. “I got his mask off.” 

Silence spread around the campfire. She could feel every pair of eyes still there staring at her. 

“You did _what?_ ” 

“Got his mask off.” She glared into the campfire. “It was a lucky shot. He wanted to fuck around, and that was his mistake.” 

“Holy shit.” David leaned in, grinning. “How the hell’d you manage that?” 

“Just grabbed it and pulled. It’s not attached to his hood or anything.” 

“What’s he look like?” asked Meg. 

“He’s kind of … ” Yui thought for a few seconds, trying to find the right words to describe what she’d seen, but the echo of pain still had her brain half-functional. “ … normal, I guess. Nothing really weird about him. Just another guy.” 

Which wasn’t entirely true. No, there hadn’t been any bizarre supernatural bullshit about him - no glowing marks, no suppurating scars, no strange _twists_ to the way he looked - but his expression in the moment he killed her had been terrifying. And there was something really _off_ about the fact that, after seeing a stream of twisted bodies and deformed faces, one of the killers was just a normal guy. 

_Looked like_ a normal guy. 

“Was he hot?” asked Meg derisively, and Yui snorted. 

“I’m not sure I’d put it that way. Easy on the eyes, maybe, but nothing that special.” 

“Wonder if that’s why he wears the mask? Because otherwise we’d know what a pathetic waste of space he is.” David snorted. “He’s gotta make sure we know he’s a freak _some_ how.” 

“I’d think the stabbing people to death thing would tell us that,” Kate pointed out. 

Yui let the conversation flow past her without really listening. At least she’d made a point, she thought. He probably wouldn’t forget what she’d done. Or what she said. Maybe he’d take it to whatever he had that resembled a heart. And maybe the Entity would let them all go free. 

Suddenly Claudette was next to her, watching her, uncertain and worried. She had a medkit in her hands, but there was nothing to do with it. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. Yui gave her a little smile. 

“Yeah. I’m fine.” 

“I don’t know if you should have done that.” Claudette paused for a second. “I don’t want him to hurt you even worse the next time.” 

“I’ll take it off again if he tries.” 

“Did you really do that to get him back for what he did to me?” 

“For you. And everybody else. He deserves whatever shit we can deal out to him.” She smiled a little wider this time and put a reassuring hand on Claudette’s knee. “Don’t feel bad about it. Even if he’d done worse, I wouldn’t regret it.” 

Claudette smiled, but it was still a little uncertain. 

“Just … be careful. There’s still a lot we don’t know about these killers. Especially not him.” 

“I will,” Yui said, giving Claudette’s knee a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry. I can handle this place.”  
  


* * *

  
Danny stalked through the fog without seeing, the muddy gray mists around him swirling as he went. In the cold grip of the fog, there was nothing to distract him, no one to run, no rules to obey or demands to follow; he could let everything else fall away and focus inward. 

Rage burned in him. It should have boiled the blood in his veins, turned his bones to ash, left him nothing but a hollow shell of bloodstained leather powered exclusively by a fury that the local samurai warlord would have envied. 

The Entity was _displeased_. He could feel that particular burden bearing down on him, making the muscles in his shoulders twitch, his feet drag heavily through the fog. He could have put those down to tiredness from a trial if it hadn’t been for the straps around his arms, which were wrapped so tight he almost couldn’t feel his fingers. 

“If you don’t like it, maybe you shouldn’t let them do stupid shit like that,” he hissed, as if the Entity could actually hear him, or if it could, actually listen to his words. 

That fucking little _shit._ She’d gotten his _mask_ off! He’d killed for years even before he’d been Ghost Face and no one had ever, _ever_ seen his face unless he wanted them to. Letting someone get a glimpse in the seconds before death was fine. It was _meaningful_ , especially if they had some idea of who he was beforehand. And once he put on the mask and took on the role, nobody had ever gotten it off. Until now. 

Something had snapped when he realized what she’d done. He’d seen her, the mask in her hand, the shocked expression on her face, and everything had gone red. His entire world had narrowed down to that one unforgivable offense. There was no other option but to kill her as violently as he could, making the murders he’d written and brought to life look pathetic by comparison. 

It had been so intense he’d lost his connection to the Entity, of all things. Normally it could have stopped him, forced him to do things _right_ ; he hadn’t made the proper offering, after all. But there was nothing it could do in the face of his rage. 

And now it was showing him just how bad of a choice that was. As if he’d _made_ the choice. As if there’d even _been_ a choice as soon as the slip attached to the mask had given way. 

He stopped in the fog and tried to get his thoughts under control. 

It wasn’t really that she’d seen his face. That didn’t matter here. There were no cops she could go to. It wasn’t even that now all the survivors - and he was absolutely certain it would be _all_ of them - would know that under the twisted plastic he wasn’t as fucked up as the other killers. He didn’t need the Entity’s disfiguring _touch_ to be a monster. 

It was that she’d done it at all. That she’d gone too far, broken the barrier of his privacy, his own little life here, ruined the mystique of Ghost Face as an untouchable monster they all should have dreaded with every passing trial. 

He’d have to make sure they knew nothing had changed between them and him. Play little games to drive the red-hot spike of fear back into their skulls. Kill them - _properly_ , when he was allowed - a lot more painfully than before. Make sure they never got out when they had to face _him._

And then, of course … there was the matter of Yui. She’d talked to him like he was just another asshole. They’d been petty, stupid little insults, but they’d annoyed him anyway. _She_ needed to be taught a lesson, and learn that her brazen arrogance wasn’t allowed here. 

He remembered her glare. The absolute confidence in the way she stood, arms crossed, refusing to back up even when he was close enough to kill. The lack of real fear when he got her down, and even when he was killing her. 

Despite what some of the papers he’d worked for might have said, Danny had never been obsessed with any of his targets for any longer than it took to stalk and kill them. Their lives were his life right up until they were a bloody smear on the floor, and then he shut the memory of their life away and forgot about it. He’d keep the articles, obviously, but if he thought about any of them in particular, it was only as a faint warm flicker of a job well done. He wasn’t Michael. He didn’t get obsessed. 

In the fog, death was only temporary. He’d see her again. And again. And again. 

The rage cooled from a searing wildfire to a constant slow burn, like a house on fire that had burned hard and fast and run out of air to feed the flames with: calm and quiet on the outside, but ready to take out half the neighborhood in an explosive inferno as soon as someone opened a door.


	2. Chapter 2

There weren’t any trials with Ghost Face for a while. 

Yui figured it was because he’d had a few too many up to that point. He liked to brag that the Entity liked _him_ best, because he was so damn good at what he did. Apparently the fact that at least a few of them got out of almost every trial with him didn’t bother him much. 

If the Entity did favor him, it wasn’t doing so now. They dealt with the rest instead, the same as they always had. What she’d done only stuck in Yui’s mind for the satisfaction of having gotten him like that - and as a nightmare whenever she remembered the uncontrolled rage on his face as he killed her. 

After the initial excitement of finding out what was under the mask, the others mostly lost interest. Once they knew he wasn’t even creepier in the flesh than he was with his mask on, they didn’t think about trying to figure out what he looked like in more detail than Yui had given. 

“We already know he’s as bad as the rest of them,” Jane had pointed out. “He doesn’t have to look like a monster to be one.” 

And that was true. That had always been true. She’d known people back home who were unforgivable - not quite as bad as the ones here, but monstrous all the same. The fact that most of the ones here looked the same inside and out was an anomaly. On top of that, being attractive and being a good person weren’t mutually inclusive concepts; he might not have been bad to look at, fury aside, but there wasn’t an ounce of him that was actually worth putting up with. 

So for a while, however they could track time here, she forgot about what she’d done. David tried to get a mask of one of the Legion just to see if he could manage it, and got both his knees broken for his trouble. Nobody saw Ghost Face, and nobody really cared; they had enough to worry about as it was. Yui started to dismiss it as just another brief interruption in their eternal nightmare in the fog. 

And then after one trial Kate said he’d been there, stalking them more than usual - and more quietly than usual. 

“I looked right at him,” she said. “Right in the mask. And he just … disappeared. Didn’t come after me or nothin’.” She looked at Yui. “Not ‘til he got a look at everyone else, anyway.” 

“You think he was trying to find me?” 

“I don’t know.” She rubbed at her shoulder, the place where the hook always found its mark. “But he played by all the rules this time, and didn’t say a thing.” 

The idea was … troubling. That he might actively start trying to find her in a trial put Yui ill at ease. Sometimes killers did that, but only in a given trial - they got focused, _obsessed_ with someone, the way Michael always did with Laurie. If he was looking for her now, well after she’d taken his mask off, that meant he was thinking about her _between_ trials. 

The thought made her skin crawl. 

Claudette, at least, could offer some comfort. They sat by each other at the fire, waiting for their next trial, just close enough that their shoulders touched. 

“They can’t come here. Even if he’s getting weird about it, he can’t get to you as long as you stay here,” she said. Yui sighed.

“Yeah … but I’m not always here, am I?”

“The chances of you being in a trial with him are pretty low. There’s too many of them, and not enough of us.” She tried to smile. “He’ll lose interest when he doesn’t find you.” 

“You think?” Yui stared into the fire, where the logs never seemed to burn down. Their constant light, the faint warmth they gave off, was its own kind of comfort in the total nightmare they were stuck in. “I’d be pretty pissed if someone got the better of me like that.” 

“Well … he did kill you.” 

Yui rubbed her throat. There were no wounds there now - there weren’t even any scars - but she could still remember the feeling of the knife ripping through her neck in one movement. The sudden sharp pain that bloomed into something worse, the sudden panic as she couldn’t breathe, the feeling of blood running over her skin and dripping down her throat - 

“Sorry,” Claudette said suddenly, snapping her out of the memory. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.” 

“No, you’ve got a point. He did.” She let her hand drop. “Maybe that’ll be enough for him. Maybe if he kills me one more time he’ll be happy with himself.” 

“He might. Trapper usually doesn’t hold a grudge past a kill or two.” Claudette’s eyes flicked to the empty spot on a log where Jake usually sat. “Well … he doesn’t anymore.” 

“You’re probably right.” Yui shook her head and leaned back. She put a hand on Claudette’s leg and gave it a pat. “Thanks. It helps to have a smarter perspective around.” 

Claudette smiled. For once, it was almost a full smile. 

“Anytime,” she said.  


* * *

  
Trials passed. Yui was just starting to put the whole thing out of her mind again when another one swept her up and dropped her on the cold, dark paths outside a home that almost looked familiar. 

Looking at the place haunted her. The first time she’d seen it here she’d felt a horrible wrenching homesickness, something that she’d thought her years in Nagoya had wiped clean from her soul. She hadn’t grown up in a place so traditional or so old, but she’d seen them back in Hida. They’d been so picturesque. She’d wanted to come back and buy one someday, once the racing got too risky or she lost a limb. 

A few trials had told her this place wasn’t quite as perfect as she’d imagined. It was run-down and falling apart. There was blood sprayed on floors and walls, even before anybody got hit. She got a sense of unease walking through it - a dread all its own, with no relation to the killers or the potential for dying horribly. And everything outside it seemed like it was dying. Heavy, cold, and miserable. Even the sprawling maples were just huge, looming silhouettes instead of the comforting and familiar sight she’d wanted. 

So for Yui, any trial here was twice as unpleasant. She picked through the stones and the rustling bamboo and headed for the nearest generator. She didn’t know who else was with her - maybe Claudette, though she was never sure if she looked forward to that or not - but she knew, unless she was _very_ lucky, she’d find out in a few minutes. 

There was a generator, still untouched, behind a crumbling wall. She crouched by it and got to work, trying to pull it to life and half-hoping someone else would show up to help her. 

Silence reigned. It struck her as strange. Usually she would have heard _something_ by now - a chainsaw, shattering glass, even a scream. All she could hear was wind in the bamboo and the trees overhead, a faint howling as it grazed along the roof. It was too quiet to be a good thing, but she tried to consider it a positive. Silence early in a trial meant maybe the Trapper was setting up to play the long game. Or Michael was on the prowl, watching them from a distance. Or the Wraith was stalking them, invisible and almost soundless, waiting for the chance to reveal himself. 

Or … 

She shook her head. No. Ghost Face wasn’t a problem anymore. Nobody else had said anything about him since Kate; he was probably right back to his normal business of being a shithead. 

The generator choked and stuttered under her fingers as she worked at it. Finding the right wires, adjusting the pistons, pulling things back into place - her experience with her motorcycles might have been helping here, but she knew, like they all did, that their knowledge of these things came from somewhere else. They couldn’t have known how to fix them otherwise. If nothing else, the Entity made sure that they could play the game properly. It probably wasn’t any _fun_ otherwise. 

The silence dragged on. 

She tensed. Was it a good thing? Maybe whoever was here now wasn’t interested in killing them, for once. Sometimes - or so she’d been told - a killer just … stopped. They’d refuse to kill, or wind up interested in something else, and they could sneak out without ever being hurt. She’d never been lucky enough to get a trial like that, but Meg swore up and down she’d had a few, long ago, back before there were so many of them. 

Yui wasn’t certain she believed her, but it would have been nice to find out she was right. 

A stray hair tickled her neck as she worked. She brushed it away and kept going, but it came back; she reached up to grab it and force it into the rest of her hair, but her fingers couldn’t find anything except bare skin. 

If things had been normal, she would have put it down as her brain just _thinking_ the hair was still there, and ignored it. But things weren’t normal. Not around here. 

The slight tickle on her neck turned into a chill that crawled down her spine. She pulled away from the generator, and turned. 

Behind her was a huge mossy boulder and a patch of bamboo. At first all she saw was shadows, darkness, the inevitable solid wall that boxed them in and defined the trial grounds, but as she stared, a shape started to show through the rustling stalks. 

A mask, so white it shouldn’t have been able to blend into its surroundings. 

Ghost Face charged at her, his knife upraised. Yui bolted away from the generator and lunged over one of the crumbling walls without stopping to look back. 

So that was why she hadn’t heard anything. He’d been sneaking around like the little shit he was, watching them - watching _her_ , maybe. Kate’s words came back to haunt her. _Didn’t come after me ‘til he got a look at everyone else._ Had he actually been picking his way through the place, seeing who was there, until he found her? 

She hadn’t heard any screams. Hadn’t felt the pulse of pain, felt the terrible urge to go find someone who was hanging from a hook and free them. Which meant that nobody was down, and nobody was hurt - and he was right here, going after her. 

Yui took a hard turn around another boulder and tried to duck into the shadows, but he was right on her heels and swiped at her with his knife. It bit deep into her arm, sent a spray of blood flying, and she just barely bit back a yelp as pain ripped through her. The fresh adrenaline sent her rushing toward the house at the center of the grounds. There were more walls there. He’d have a hell of a time trying to catch her in _there_. 

She couldn’t hear him following her; even the perpetual heartbeat that told them when they were too close for safety had died down, but with him, that wasn’t always a guarantee. She darted over fallen doors and lunged through another window and nearly dropped right onto Dwight, who stumbled back and almost hit the ground. 

“Shit!” He managed to catch himself on a wall. “Careful. Please - who is it?” 

He’d seen her cut. Yui panted and pushed him away from the window, into the shadows of the porch nearby. 

“Ghost Face,” she said, and felt him wince. 

“Great.” He pulled out a slim roll of bandages and started wrapping up the cut. She didn’t bother to take off her jacket; there was no point. “He’s playing a hell of a game, huh?” 

“What?” 

“I finished a generator, Quentin’s almost done with one … ” He glanced over his shoulder, as if he was expecting to see the mask and knife approaching. “And he hasn’t gotten anybody yet.” 

“Except me.” 

“Well, you’re still standing.” There was a brief flicker of a smile on his face. “He must be stalking all of us. Trying to … do whatever it is he does, so he can get us all down at once.” 

“Yeah, well, he fucked it up,” Yui grumbled. “And if we get out of here before he can pull that off, he’s in big trouble. I hope.” 

“Probably.” Dwight pulled the bandage tight and tucked the end into the rest of it. “Okay, that should do it for n - ” 

She felt it: the sudden freezing chill through her whole body that set off every alarm and made her want to run. Real, godawful terror, the kind she’d only ever felt a few times in her life before getting here and finding out it could happen _all the time_ , seized her. From the look on Dwight’s face, he was feeling the same thing. 

There was only one reason for it. 

They both ran in opposite directions. Dwight scrambled through the window she’d come through; she headed for the darkness outside the house, in the bamboo and behind the rocks. Her head pounded and she tried to be fast, tried to be stealthy, tried to find a pallet, _anything_ to protect her - 

But there was no knife and no pain, and when she finally slowed to a halt, there was no heartbeat, either. 

He wasn’t behind her. 

Seconds later she flinched at a yell. Too bad for Dwight, she thought, but it gave her a chance to loop back around to the generator she’d started - and told her that Ghost Face wasn’t focusing on her. It was a relief, even if it was going to cost Dwight a lot. 

Maybe Dwight had been right. Maybe he _was_ just trying to play the long game, get them all down and kill them one by one so they couldn’t do anything to save each other. It seemed sadistic enough for him. The thought was a cruel one, but it was better than thinking that he’d been waiting to see if _she_ was there before starting anything. Yui clung to it, and tried to find her generator again. 

But a nasty little part of her imagination said: and what if he just wanted to find you so he could kill everyone else _first_? What if he wants you to be the last one, so he can gut you without having to worry about an interruption? That’s sadistic enough for him, too. It’s what a stalker would do. 

She shoved the thought away. A stalker would try to go after her and her alone, not the others; she had experience with that. He’d sabotage his own damn trial to make sure she was his top priority. That had to be it. Michael did it for Laurie. Ghost Face wasn’t still focused on her, or she’d already be dead, or at least still running. 

It took her a few more minutes to find her generator again and finish it. She heard Dwight hit a hook, heard Feng scream as she went down, and by the time the lights flicked on above her there was silence again. Three generators and nobody dead yet. It should have been a good sign. 

Her arm throbbed. She ignored it and moved on through the trees, looking for another generator or someone to help. She found Quentin peering out from behind a rock; he held a finger to his lips and pointed. Yui looked around it and saw Ghost Face carrying Feng toward a hook. 

They waited, him looking away, her glaring, as he dropped her on it and immediately turned and stalked away. He vanished into the shadows in seconds, leaving no trails or hints as to where he was going except _away_ from there. They waited a few more seconds before creeping out from behind the rock to get Feng down, patch her up and then split up again. 

He could double back. He might be focused on finding someone else. That was what bothered her about the trials - or at least, it was one of the big things that bothered her; _everything_ about the trials was a nightmare. That there was no way to know what was happening until it was almost too late. If they stuck together, they were all in danger at once; if they split up, someone could die without anyone around to help. 

And fuckers like Ghost Face preyed on that, deliberately. He could take advantage of them if they were together or separate. 

There was a rustling in the grass nearby. Yui froze, just in time to see him creep by ahead of her. He didn’t look over. Didn’t see her. But he was headed for someone - and here she was without so much as a flashlight. Her palms itched to try and break his face, but even if she hadn’t been restrained by something she couldn’t control, she wouldn’t have done it. Getting away from him was a priority. 

Despite the urge to get finished and get _out_ , she turned back to find Dwight. The more of them that got out, the better. 

Halfway there she heard Quentin yell. And then, seconds later, Feng again. She winced, but headed toward Dwight, who she could just see through the fog and shadows fighting with the awful, sleek black claws erupting from the hook. She pulled him off - something she knew she really shouldn’t have been able to do - and he hung off her arm for a few seconds, trying to catch his breath. 

“Thanks,” he wheezed. Yui pulled him upright. 

“Come on. The others just went down. We have to get moving before he gets back to us.” 

Dwight nodded, though she could tell he wasn’t happy about going without getting fixed up. But there wasn’t any time. Ghost Face would _know_ Dwight was free, and know who’d done it, and he’d be on them in seconds if they weren’t careful. 

Until she heard the scream of pain that told her Feng was back on a hook, would be fighting like Dwight had been. And as they closed in toward her, the same sound from Quentin, who wouldn’t be in trouble - yet, anyway. 

“Shit.” 

“We know where they are,” Dwight whispered, crouching down. “Should we get Feng and try to fix a generator before we get Quentin?” 

“No. That’ll get him onto the three of us, and you two don’t have the leeway for that.” Yui grit her teeth and stared out at the darkness. “You find a generator. I’ll get them. I’ve still got some time left to - ” 

“Yui.” 

It was a whisper, rough and afraid, and she looked back at Dwight. He was staring fixedly behind them. 

She grabbed his shoulder and dragged him past her, turning to face the advancing mask with a glare. 

“Get moving!” she snapped. She felt him stumble away from her and only once she knew he had some distance did she start to back up, trying to stay between him and Ghost Face without being close enough to get hit. Ghost Face never stopped, his pace as steady as ever, the knife in his hand glinting yellow in the light from the house. 

He shifted, starting to move around her, but she jumped in his path, ready and willing to take a blow. Dwight needed the time to run. He wasn’t the fastest in their group - 

Ghost Face reached out, grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her aside. 

Yui stumbled, tripped, and hit the ground. She raised an arm to avoid a killing blow that never came. 

He walked right past her without so much as a word. 

She stayed on the ground for longer than she should have. _That_ was not normal killer behavior. It made her shoulders tense, made a lump of something cold and dark form in her stomach. She’d thought his behavior earlier meant he _wasn’t_ focusing on her. 

This was so far from focusing it came full circle. The only other killer she knew who did something like _this_ was Michael. 

It took a scream from Dwight to jumpstart her back into action, scrambling to her feet just in time to hear a crack of thunder and see a rolling wave in the clouds overhead. She’d waited too long. One down, three to go, which meant she had to get to Quentin _now_ if she wanted any chance of escaping with at least one other person. 

Knowing Dwight was the focus, she ran for Quentin where he was still hanging on the hook, fingers curling around the bloody metal hopelessly. There was a sharp yell suddenly cut off - not far enough away for safety - and another crack of thunder, another terrifying warning that they were losing. She swore she could hear footsteps close by. Sometimes, Ghost Face lingered while they struggled and died - but something told her that he wasn’t wasting time right now. 

She had her hands on him, bracing herself for the lift as he came off the hook, when she saw his gaze move just past her and freeze. She ignored it and pulled him off and braced herself for the hit, staying right where she was, refusing to let Quentin go down a second time. 

The knife hit home, just hard enough to send her tumbling into the grass nearby; she heard Quentin yell something and run for it. Yui forced herself to her feet in time to realize she _still_ wasn’t being chased. 

It made the lump in her stomach get colder. Raw fear made her throat tight. She tried to push it aside but her back throbbed in time with her arm, reminding her that she was hurt, and in danger, and - 

She heard another broken scream, the kind that came when an already-painful wound found itself reopened by the same sort of hook as before - 

And now, terribly alone. 

She crouched behind a rock and bit her lip against the pain. She might still be able to find Quentin, she thought. Might still be able to get him free and get out. But she heard the third thundercrack again too soon, which meant he’d let himself die to give her a chance at escape in the only other way they had available to them. 

Biting back whimpers, blood dripping off the edge of her jacket as she went, Yui crept through the darkness and tried to find that gleam of rusting metal that, for something so completely out of place in almost any trial grounds, was somehow almost impossible to find. It would be open by now, and if Ghost Face found it first, she’d know when he closed it. Either way, she had at least a chance of getting out. There was always a chance. _Always._

She peered out from behind a rock. Nothing moved, except the sick-looking clouds overhead, but that didn’t mean much; she darted across the open path to a broken section of wall. It was crumbling, overgrown, and completely out of place, but it was relatively safe, too. He couldn’t see her through it. 

Yui paused just under part of the wall that had broken off enough that she could pull herself over it if he came out of nowhere and tried to catch her breath against the pain. She was used to getting hurt; riding didn’t always end well, and she’d gotten hurt fixing her bike more times than she could count, and fights were inevitable when you were intwined in the seedy underbelly of a city trying to make a living off illegal street races. But that didn’t make deliberate attacks any less painful. 

She held her breath and tried to block out the pain. Jake had tried to show all of them how to manage it from time to time, because if they could hold it at bay they were that much harder for the killers to find. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears; the wind overhead hissed through the leaves of the trees around her. 

And then she heard a sigh. Soft, deliberate, and very, very close by. If she’d been breathing, she would have missed it. 

A hand came over the broken wall and grabbed her by the back of the jacket. She choked back a scream and flailed as she was dragged over it, broken wood scraping at any exposed skin; she hit the ground hard on her back, right on her stab, sending a fresh wave of pain through her. 

Above her, Ghost Face watched her upside down, his mask no better looking for the new angle. 

She tried to force herself up, but he brought up a foot and slammed it into her chest, winding her; the heel dug into the spot below her ribs and ground down, making her clench her jaw against the pain. He kicked once, hard; she couldn’t hold back a cry at that. 

_The rest are dead and the doors are closed and he found you and you’re all alone …_ The words rattled through her skull as cold, awful fear closed in on her, making it even harder to breathe as she choked and coughed. She watched as he circled around her, set a foot on either side of her body and dropped to his knees over her. It wasn’t an unfamiliar pose. She’d seen him do it to the dying, right before he made sure they were dead and took a souvenir with him while he did it. 

He’d wanted her to be the last one left alive. 

The knife glinted as he brought it up to her neck. She braced herself for a cut throat and got a tiny little pinprick of pain instead. He dug the tip in, drew a long, bloody line down to her collarbone, followed that to her ribs and stopped when he hit her shirt. It hurt, but nowhere near as badly as everything else he’d done so far. 

Then he slammed the blade down in as far as it would go. 

She didn’t scream. It hurt so much it left her winded, breathless, barely able to choke. She dragged in a gasping breath when he jerked the blade out, and _then_ she had the breath to scream as he rammed it back in again, this time between her ribs. 

Punctured lung, some part of her thought, and then even that was gone in a blinding haze of agony as he sawed the blade between her ribs like he was trying to cut one free. The knife came out and back in again between two other ribs. Some instinctive reaction from way down at the raw, red, animal center of her made her claw at him to try and make him stop; he swatted her hands away like they were nothing. 

The world faded in and out around her. Flickers of memory taunted her. This was for the mask. It had to be. He’d never been so targeted, so _deliberate_ before. He’d never been this violent, not even when they’d managed to blind him for minutes straight to try and get to the exit gate before he could stop them. 

He left her bleeding from four ragged cuts before he finally leaned back. His knife and hand and sleeve were soaked in gore, turning the dusty black of his outfit dark and dripping. Yui could barely see, but his mask was bright enough to stand out even as the shadows started to close in. Parts of her were numb from the pain. 

But the fear had gone. As soon as the knife went in for the second stab it had fled, leaving her to her pain. The worst had happened; there was nothing left to be afraid of. 

Blood bubbled up between her lips, splattering him when she coughed. One lung was still good, but it wouldn’t be for long. 

“Is … that all?” she choked out. 

His head tilted, like he was surprised she had enough strength left to talk. She tried to take another breath and almost asphyxiated on the spot. 

“You want me - to beg?” Even talking hurt, but she forced herself to keep going. There wasn’t much time left. “Or say - I’m - sorry?” 

It might have been a dying hallucination, but she swore she could see his fingers tighten around the hilt of his knife. Yui managed to smirk, though most of it was lost in the blood as it poured out the corners of her mouth. 

“F-fuck - you.” She put all the spite she could manage to pull together into her words, broken and wheezing as they were. He’d hear it. He was too close to miss it. 

The light around her faded. The last thing she saw was his mask, still and silent and staring, a stark contrast to the last time she’d seen him as she bled out on the dirt.  


* * *

  
Back at the campfire, she stared down at her hands without seeing them for a long time. Words went in one ear and out the other. Her mind was still back in the trial, still trying to rationalize the fact that he’d deliberately left her until the last so he could kill her without her ever having a chance of rescue. 

It wasn’t until someone put a hand on her shoulder that sound and light and _pain_ suddenly came rushing back to her, and the echo of being torn open at the ribs hit her like a truck. 

“Yui? What’s wrong?” 

Claudette’s words lodged in her brain, the concern giving way to panic, as she wrapped her arms around herself and curled up and _didn’t_ make a sound until she was sure the scream had shrunk down to a gasp. 

Around her people were staring, looking for medkits that weren’t on the edge of depletion, trying to question the others about what had happened, but there weren’t any answers - and there wouldn’t be, until she was ready to give them. Until she could recognize exactly what was going on between her and the killer she’d unmasked out of hatred. 

A part of her suspected that probably meant it would never happen, but it was overruled by a sense of dread that told her she was likely to find out a lot sooner than she wanted.


	3. Chapter 3

“So he killed you again?” asked David. 

It had taken Yui a while to get herself back under control, and by then the group around the campfire had shrunk to ten. Claudette, fortunately, was still around, and she’d made it a priority to sit as close to Yui as possible, on the side that didn’t still hurt with the memory of agony. It had helped to have her there. 

“Yeah. Bad.” She almost brought her hand up to touch her fully-healed side, but Claudette put her own over it. “He didn’t even take a picture when he was done. At least, not while I was still alive to see it.” 

David let out a low whistle. 

“That’s fucked.” She grimaced at him, even if it was a pretty appropriate summation of what had happened. “So he’s still mad, huh.” 

“Apparently.” 

“I thought they didn’t hold grudges,” said Steve, more than slightly nervous. 

“They usually don’t,” Claudette said, her hand still firmly on Yui’s. 

“Yeah, but they don’t usually get unmasked by force, either,” Nea cut in. Along with David, she’d been one of the few to think what Yui had done had been a great idea. “Guess it burns their asses when we turn the tables on them. You tell him to go fuck himself?” 

“Almost.” Nea laughed, and Yui felt a smile pull at the corner of her mouth. “I think it pissed him off even more, though.” 

“Great! Keep him pissed off.” 

“But what if that just makes him even worse about it?” Steve asked, and looked back at the fire in a hurry when Claudette glared at him. 

“What else can we do to them?” Nea kicked at the dirt near the fire. “Can’t punch them, can’t kill them, can’t take their eyes out with a thumb … best we can do is spite them. You did the right thing, Yui.” 

“I hope so.” Yui sighed and leaned her head against Claudette’s shoulder. “He does that again, I’m going to run out of things to call him.”  
  


* * *

  
Trials came and went. Some people saw Ghost Face; some people didn’t. There were too many killers for too few survivors; like Claudette had said, the chances of running into him again weren’t exactly high. 

But this time Yui didn’t have the luxury of thinking that maybe he’d gotten over things. His total, unnerving silence where before he’d been impossible to shut up without a locker door to the face had her on edge. If he’d yelled at her, or sworn, or called her names, maybe she could have dealt with it more easily. She could rail against that, after all. His anger versus hers. The silence felt like it came from somewhere much worse - some deep dark pool of rage that lurked in the worst part of his soul, provided he even had one. 

Regardless, she tried to put it out of her mind and focus on her friends and the trials they were dealing with. Things were bad enough, and she didn’t want them worrying about her too much when they had their own problems to work through. Only when there were a few of them left, when it was just her and maybe a handful of others and Claudette, did she talk about the worry that was still nagging at her, digging claws into the back of her skull to try and make her look over her shoulder even when she was at the campfire. 

They tried to reassure her. Nancy gave her a flashlight to keep him off her back, which she ended up burning out in a trial with the Hag; Nea tried to give her advice on putting an elbow as far into his nose as possible, but both of them knew it probably wasn’t going to work, except maybe by accident. Laurie didn’t give advice but she did offer sympathy. Quentin only sighed, saying he hoped she was luckier than him. 

And then another trial came, picking Yui up and landing her in the heavy, fetid air of the swamp. 

She grimaced as mud sucked at her boots and tried to make for higher ground. All the reeds and grasses made it easy to hide, but running was always a problem - the slick mud and shallow water were too easy to slip in, and even the driest places tended to crumble underfoot. The best bet was always to just get everything done and get out and hope like hell the killer didn’t find her. 

For a while, all she heard was the silence of the swamp. Normally she would have relished it; now it only plucked at her nerves, too similar to the deathly silent trial that had left her in bleeding agony with Ghost Face looming over her. There were so many reasons for silence early on in a trial, but no matter how many she ran through, the worst one kept bobbing back to the surface. 

A shriek cut through the air. Her head jerked up. It was Claudette; she’d recognize her voice anywhere. Automatically Yui pulled away from the generator, but she hesitated; Claudette probably wasn’t down yet. Somehow they _knew_ when someone was really hurt, on their way to a hook or worse. And that hadn’t been it. 

She went back to work, but her attention was only half on the machine. She _still_ didn’t know who it was out there. Hell, even the noisiest killers knew how to keep a lid on things if they tried hard enough; it could have been one of the chainsaw bastards for all she knew. 

But then the reeds rustled, just close enough to catch her eye. Claudette stumbled out of the darkness, clutching her ribs, trying to find help. Yui was up in an instant, heading for her, already reaching for the thin strips of gauze she had on her all the time, but as soon as they met Claudette grabbed her arm hard enough to hurt. 

“It’s him,” she managed. 

“Him who?” Yui tried to get at the injuries, but Claudette wouldn’t let go. 

“Ghost Face.” 

She looked at Claudette. Her expression was - pain and fear, the usual for being chased in a trial, but there was an echo of horror there, too, a look in her eyes that made Yui pause. 

She looked up, past Claudette. 

Ghost Face was standing some distance away, watching them. He wasn’t hiding, wasn’t stalking, just standing and staring; the mask, whiter than bone, stood out in the browns and grays of the swamp. There was no mistaking him. 

He lifted his knife, silvery steel gleaming in the murk, and wiped it clean with a hand. Then he took two steps into the trees and disappeared. 

“He left,” she said. Claudette glanced back. 

“Why?” Cautiously, she took her hand off her ribs, but winced and put it back. “We should go. Before he finds us again.” 

“Yeah … yeah. Good idea.” 

They crept away, hiding in shadows and behind trees, trying to find a place to go where they might not be seen. There was a hidden area just under the broken-down shack on stilts near the center of the grounds, and they crouched underneath it, where Claudette finally let Yui get at the cut. 

“I don’t know why he left us,” she said, biting back a yelp when Yui layered the gauze on. 

“So he could go after someone else, I bet.” Yui tried to be careful. The cut wasn’t too deep, but it was bleeding heavily. “Get someone alone, corner them and stab them. You found me; I bet that got in the way.” 

“Maybe.” But now Claudette sounded uncertain. “We should - try to hurry this up. Just in case he’s trying to hurt you again.” 

Fresh fear and unease ate their way into Yui’s mind as she patched Claudette up, unwrapping her hachimaki from around her arm and tying it around Claudette instead to hold the gauze in place. As much as she valued it, it made for a halfway decent bandage in a pinch, and so far she’d always gotten it back. When she finished he two of them made their way out from under the house back into the open air of the swamp, toward a generator that hadn’t even been started. They heard a yell in the distance - Adam, Yui thought - but at least that meant they weren’t being targeted. 

Yet. 

A minute later and they heard him scream. Claudette grimaced and pointed to herself, then toward the direction it had come from; Yui nodded, and kept working as Claudette disappeared into the reeds. _We should try to hurry this up._ No faster way to finish than to get everything done. 

The lights overhead flickered and sparked until she finished; then they blazed to life, but the swamp wasn’t the darkest trial ground, and they only illuminated so much. She stood and looked around, trying to see where Claudette had gone, where Adam was, where the fourth person might be. If Ghost Face was creeping around, just within her sights. 

There was nothing. Nothing but silence and stillness and fetid air. It should have been reassuring. Instead it just made her fingers curl into fists. 

Cautiously, she made her way through the grass until another scream made her flinch. Adam again, which meant Claudette had gotten to him. She turned and headed in his direction. By the time she got there, Ghost Face would have moved on - probably. And she could get him down, get them all working again - 

“Hey!” It was a hiss that stopped her in her tracks. She glanced over; Ace was at the nearest generator, watching her over the top of it. “C’mere, help me with this.” 

“I’m going to get Adam. I’ll come back once I’m done.” 

“Really? With this guy around? I thought you pissed him off.” 

“We piss them all off every time. Just hold on.” 

Adam wasn’t too far away, fighting with the massive claw that was trying to run him through. Yui shuddered, neatly avoided it, and pulled him off and down just in time to hear a scream from behind her. Ace, now. She was glad she hadn’t stopped to help him, then felt a flicker of guilt for the thought. 

“We have to move,” Adam said as she tried to help him with the hole in his shoulder. “He came back too fast before.” 

“If he’s on Ace, we don’t have to worry for a while.” 

“I don’t want to take the chance.” He pulled away from her and headed for the trees. “Go check on him - I’ll be fine.” 

She watched him go, mouth pressed into a thin line, but turned and headed back toward Ace. She took a more winding path this time. Around trees, past rocks well out of her way, and thought she saw something black moving out of the corner of her eye at one point. She didn’t look back - better not to waste time. 

But then she heard Claudette shriek, and stopped, and turned back. Ace had time. He could wait. 

Before she could even find Claudette she heard Adam yell _again_. Ghost Face was moving fast - too fast. Taking everyone down, leaving _her_ standing. Hard, cold fear wormed its way into her mind, burrowing hard and fast - he’d seen her before, knew she was in the trial, and he hadn’t bothered to chase her again. He could have easily sent her and Claudette running, separated them without a second thought, taken Claudette down or left her bleeding … 

But he hadn’t. 

She crouched to try and hide in the tall grass and crept forward, looking for Claudette. Not far enough away, she heard the sharp, cut-off yell as Adam died on the hook. She stopped, and listened. 

Not even footsteps. But Ghost Face’s specialty was silence, right up until it was too late to know otherwise. 

Yui turned suddenly and saw nothing behind her. 

This time she ran. Either she’d find Claudette or she’d circle around to get Ace off the hook; anything else wasn’t an option. 

Her feet slipped in the mud. Dead tree branches and tall grass got in her way. She couldn’t see any blood, but that didn’t mean much around here. The scream hadn’t been that far away - where was Claudette? Maybe she’d dragged herself into a corner somewhere, trying to get her breath back and hide away - 

Yui rounded a tree and stopped, panting. She tried to listen. Sometimes, in the darkness and mist and with their vision blinded by blood and fear, it was easier to hear someone than look for them. Most people couldn’t fight the pain without making a sound. It made it easier for killers to track them, but it wasn’t always killers looking for them. 

She listened, and thought she could hear something. The rustle of cloth as Claudette dragged herself to safety? Or maybe the reeds? There was … _something_ \- 

Panic seized her whole body half a second too late. 

The knife came down hard into her back. It bit through her gang jacket, through the shirt underneath, through skin, between her ribs and sent her crashing to the ground with a yelp. The pain took her breath away along with all her strength. 

Someone stepped into her peripheral vision. Worn black boots, splattered with mud. She could see the edge of a coat. Yui tried to glare up, but the movement made pain ripple down her back. 

Ghost Face was looking down at her in total silence, wiping the blood off his blade with a casual movement that should have taken all his fingers off. There was a spray of bright red on his mask. She wondered whose it was. 

He stood there for a long few seconds. She managed to catch her breath and manage the pain, giving her room to speak. Normally, this was where he taunted them. This time, she had a terrible feeling things were about to get much worse. The fear festered, surged - and turned into anger by the time it reached her mouth. 

“Hurry up, freak,” she snapped. “Or are you hoping I’ll actually beg this time?” 

No response. It made her shoulders tense, her spine prickle. He tapped his knife against a finger thoughtfully, like he was trying to decide what to do next. As if there were any other choices other than hook her or kill her. What the hell was going through his head? 

Eventually he grabbed her, hefting her up and dropping her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing. She fought back as best she could - trying to hit him hard enough that he’d lose his grip, maybe do some real damage for a change - but he got her to a hook too soon, and it took him as little effort to drop her on it as it had to pick her up. 

Everyone said that, over time, you got used to being hooked. That after it happened the tenth or twentieth time the pain dulled, turned into an almost normal thing. 

It didn’t, really. 

She couldn’t hold back the scream as the bloody, rusting hook tore through her and the full weight of her body dragged down on it. Her fingers scrabbled at the bloody metal automatically, trying to find some way to get it out, but she couldn’t - not just yet. There _were_ ways to get hold of it, to rip herself free if nobody else could do it, but until the flashes of light cleared from her eyes she wasn’t going anywhere. 

When they did, it was to see the back of Ghost Face’s coat as he stalked off into the swamp again. Not sticking around. Not taunting her. Leaving. Good, she thought, and reached up above her head, trying to feel for a place on the metal that wasn’t slick with condensation from the swamp. Her hands were too bloody to get a good grip, but she felt feverishly, trying to find something, some kind of promise that she wasn’t about to get killed. 

Maybe he’d gotten over it, she thought distantly. Maybe he’d realized she wasn’t going to grovel and beg and apologize and he’d moved on. Maybe he _wouldn’t_ hold a grudge. Maybe things would go back to whatever kind of horrible their normal had become - 

And then … Ghost Face came back. But he wasn’t alone. Claudette was slung over his shoulder, kicking at him, elbows flailing. 

He stopped in front of Yui and dropped Claudette to the mud. 

Her gut clenched in sudden, icy fear. 

There was a fresh wound on Claudette’s back, a nasty long swipe of a blade that left blood soaking into her shirt. As she watched, he lifted a foot and set his heel on the cut, pushing down, grinding against it. Claudette choked back a sound of pain. 

Mud from his boot smeared across the wound, her shirt, and the hachimaki wrapped just below the fresh cut. His mask never looked away from Yui; she glared right back, clutching at the hook in sudden desperation. 

“You piece of shit!” she snarled. 

There was a crack of thunder and rolling wave overhead; without anyone left to help him, Ace was gone. Ghost Face tilted his head toward the sound and ground his foot down harder. 

“What the hell is this for? Are you still pissed I took your mask off? You killed me twice for that!” 

“Yui - ” Claudette cut herself off with a whimper as the pain got worse. Yui tried to kick out from where she was hanging, but Ghost Face was just far enough away that she couldn’t land a hit. 

“You think this is going to make me regret it? Stop it!” She swung from the hook, and the fresh pain as her body pulled down even harder made her fight back a surge of bile. 

He twisted his foot, ripping the wound and Claudette’s shirt. Her cry ripped through Yui’s skull like a bolt of lightning. 

“You fucking sack of shit! If I get my hands on you again, I’m going to _take_ that mask and keep it! I’m going to put my foot so far up your ass you’ll taste leather!” Yui grabbed the hook above her head and wrenched at it to no avail. She could see flickers of orange light and black carapace crawling up the stand that much faster, but if she couldn’t get free, then at least it’d kill her - and he’d have no more reason to keep hurting Claudette. 

She hoped. 

“Get _off_ of her!” Yui kicked, one more time. He smacked her foot away without even looking at it. But he could see the progression of the Entity’s calling more clearly than she could; he had to know what was going to happen sooner rather than later. 

He took his foot off Claudette and came in close. Too close. There was nowhere to lean back to; Yui clenched her fingers tight around the metal of the hook and pulled instead. 

“I’d like to see you _try_ ,” he said, bright and deadly as his knife. 

“Oh, I will,” she hissed, glaring into the empty black eyes of his mask. “I’ll take that mask off while you’re choking to death and burn it in the campfire.” 

There was no response. Ghost Face stepped back, knife gripped hard in his hand, and watched as the Entity’s carapace solidified and came to life around her. She glared up at the claws as they shuddered and shifted, and for once, she didn’t fight them when they came down at her. 

The last thing she saw was Ghost Face reaching down to grab Claudette; then there was nothing but darkness.  
  


* * *

  
Snow fell from somewhere overhead. It formed piles on rocks and broken-down chairlifts, frosted the branches of the trees, and built up around Danny where he was sitting on the roof of the ski lodge, settling on his coat and boots for a while before melting. It should have been pretty: a dusting of fresh-fallen snow on an otherwise dull brown landscape. But in the grayish light all around them, it just looked differently dirty, like it had come down through the smoke from a factory and was already halfway to being slush. 

Dirty or not, at least it was cold. Ormond was Danny’s preferred place to hunker down in when he was between trials. Most of the killer’s territories were reasonably cool, but this one had occupants who were willing to put up with him for more than a few minutes at a time. Those two factors kept him coming back as often as he had the opportunity. 

He always thought better in the cold, too. It kept his mind focused and sharp. Right now, he needed all the focus he could get. His brain was running down old familiar paths in new unfamiliar ways for reasons he was still very carefully piecing together. 

The world around him was still and silent except for the faint featherfall of snow, the distant wind and rumbling, and the sound of scraping, grumbling, and swearing somewhere behind him as someone tried to get up to him through one of several holes on the roof. They got bigger every time he was here. Legion didn’t know how to fix things. 

Danny stared out at the distant trees as the scrambling got louder. Finally there was a _thud_ followed by a muffled _fuck_. 

“Have a shitty trial or something?” Frank said as he approached. Danny didn’t even look around. “You usually come swanning back in bragging.” 

“Didn’t feel like it this time.” He tapped the handle of his knife against the chin of his mask. The usual itch of irritation he felt when dealing with Frank’s inane bullshit was there, but distant now. 

“No? They must have really kicked your ass this time.” 

“Don’t project, Frank, it’s unhealthy. I got all four of them.” 

“Fuck off. What the hell are you doing up here, then?” 

“Thinking. I know you’re at least _familiar_ with the idea, though maybe not through actual practice.” 

“Fuck _off_!” Frank snarled. 

It would have been so easily to rile him more, start a fight, throw him off the roof and sate a little more bloodlust. Normally Danny would have done it. Pushed him into pulling his knife and, well, how could he help himself then? But there were more important things to focus on right now than pissing off an already pissed-off teenager. 

The silence in the wake of the outburst left Frank with nothing to rail against. He kicked at an ice dam on the edge of the roof for a while before turning back to Danny. 

“Didn’t peg you as the pensive type.” And there was a hint of the intellect that kept Danny coming back. There _was_ something under all the anger and violence that could have been great if the Entity hadn’t intervened; maybe someday he’d manage to pull it out, see how bad it could really get. “The hell’s got you so fucking focused?” 

“Had a problem a few trials back.” 

“They knock you on your ass and escape?” 

“One of them got my mask off.” 

Instantly Frank was on him, fingers snatching at his mask, but Danny was ready for him. He whipped his knife up and through Frank’s hand without looking, felt it hit home and go out the other side. Frank yelled, pulled back, ripped his hand free and reeled away. 

“God damn it! You cocksucker! What the fuck was that for?!” 

“Because you don’t understand personal boundaries.” Danny idly flicked the blood off his blade. 

“Come _on_! You let some shitbag little survivor get your mask off but _we_ don’t get to see what’s going on?” 

“I didn’t _let_ her do anything,” Danny said testily. “It was an accident. She got lucky.” 

“Lucky my ass! I thought you didn’t fuck up!” 

“I don’t.” 

His tone kept Frank at a distance. He could hear footsteps pacing around the roof, muttered swearing, a hiss of pain as Frank prodded at the stab. It would heal eventually, but until then, Danny hoped it stung like hell. 

There was more scrabbling. He thought for a second that Frank was heading back down into the lodge to complain, but then he heard another voice. 

“What’s going on?” Julie. Drawn by Frank’s yelling, probably. As dedicated as ever. 

“He fucking stabbed me through the hand!” 

“That’s not the worst he’s ever done.” He heard her pull herself up onto the roof. 

“Yeah? You know what he just told me? Some fucking survivor got his _mask_ off.” 

Danny tightened his grip around his knife as the irritation spiked. Tell Frank something, and everyone else would know in a couple hours. The idea of discretion was probably as unfamiliar to him as the idea of rational thought. 

“For real?” Julie said after a few seconds of silence. He could almost feel her hidden gaze on the back of his hood. “Someone got it off?” 

“Would your boyfriend lie to you?” 

“You haven’t even let us see your face.” He could swear there was suspicion in her voice. Not quite hurt - none of them trusted him, a favor he returned with gusto - but annoyance, and maybe a hint of betrayal. No, he hadn’t let them see his face - or anyone else here. It had been a point of pride, up until now. 

“Like I told him: I didn’t _let_ her see it.” 

And he hoped that Julie, at least, could understand the implication there without him having to spell it out for her. She was brighter than Frank. Or at the very least, she had a better grip on when someone wasn’t interested in going into details. 

There was silence behind him. A conversation was going on that he wasn’t privy to. They were the Legion, after all. They had their own secrets. 

“So what are you going to do about it?” she eventually asked. He let out a sigh through his nose. 

“I don’t know yet. That’s why I was up here. So if the two of you would please fuck off, I’d really appreciate it.” 

“This is our place, asshole,” Frank snapped. 

“You can spare the roof.” 

He heard muttering behind him. Then Frank clambered back down into the lodge, grumbling the whole way. Julie lingered a little longer. He knew she had questions. Probably hundreds of them. He’d fascinated her, back when they first met; he knew that on some level he still did, but the shine had worn off by now. 

“Who was it?” she asked. 

“It’s not important,” he said, which was only a half truth. 

“Not the guy who tried to get Joey’s mask off a while back?” 

“No.” He turned his knife around in his hands. “Tell me, Julie … what do you value here?” 

“What do _I_ value?” She almost sounded surprised. “Or what do _we_ value?” 

“You, please. I need a … particular perspective.” 

She was quiet for a time. He let her think. Unlike Frank, she sometimes said something worth listening to. 

“The Legion,” she said, which didn’t surprise him but didn’t really help him, either. “Being safe here. My mask.” 

“Nothing else?” 

“I don’t have much else. We didn’t get to bring anything with us when we came. And we lost a lot of what we had stored here when the place came with us.” 

Danny stared out into the trees. The snow had started to lighten up already. 

“What would you do if someone took your mask?” 

“Get it back.” She waited, but he didn’t ask another question. “Is that all you need?” 

“For now.” 

He heard her linger a little while longer before making her way back through the hole in the roof. Now, without any distractions, the gears in his head started to shift. 

What did _she_ value? Her friends. The other survivors. But there was only so much he could do to any one of them in a trial; the Entity demanded its sacrifices, and would actively intervene if he took a shot without the proper offering. And sometimes even doing _that_ left him frustratingly limited. There was always the chance he’d run into them outside a trial, but it was a pretty slim chance, both because they so rarely wandered away from their little campfire and because he might not be wherever they ended up. There were some significant disadvantages to being a wandering killer. 

Safety … he couldn’t sabotage the campfire. He couldn’t even get _near_ the campfire. She’d always have that to go back to. And she didn’t have a mask; there was nothing he could take from her to really dig at her, make her feel vulnerable … 

He paused. A gust of wind blew the new-fallen snow off the trees, leaving their branches bare again. 

Memories flicked across his vision. Memories of _her_ , running, struggling, hanging on a hook, rescuing her friends from certain death. 

Danny had a very good memory for targets. Even the smallest details were bright and vivid in the broken mirror of his brain, the images refracting off each other, magnifying in his mind’s eye. 

He watched the trees in silence, and smiled.


	4. Chapter 4

The wrecking yard was dark, dreary, and aside from all the crows, completely empty. 

It usually was. There was nothing worthwhile here; even its own permanent resident tended to wander outside the boundaries whenever he got the chance. There were buildings, mostly on the verge of collapsing, scattered through the sea of broken-down cars and stacks of crushed metal. Sickly trees provided shadows and coverage, but there weren’t many of them. 

The place was a dump, and probably even the Entity couldn’t have made it worse than it was in the real world. Danny had seen his fair share of junkyards while wandering across the country, and as far as he’d ever been able to tell, they were all the same. The only difference this one had was the cold fog curling between the metal and a crushing sense of dread that pervaded the place, but even then, he couldn’t be sure that hadn’t already been there. 

The fact that it was empty was what had brought him here. He had a plan, and to try and make it work, he needed to be alone. There were probably better or easier places to work with - ones with occupants slightly less inclined to cave the back of his skull in, for example - but he needed privacy. It was surprisingly difficult for him to find. 

He could have done it at Ormond, but Legion would have gotten in the way. He could have tried it at the meat plant, but Amanda had cameras all over the place. He _might_ have been able to pull it off in someone else’s realm, but the chances of getting interrupted either just for shits and giggles or to kill him on the spot was higher than he liked. 

So: the wrecking yard. He hadn’t seen Philip on the way in, but the man had the unfair advantage of being able to go invisible, so it was possible he was still lurking around. Danny was willing to take the chance, though; from what he knew, the bastard tended to keep to himself even in his own little space, too lost in guilt and regret to pay attention to anyone creeping on through. 

His movement stirred the fog just slightly enough to leave a trail behind him as he went. He headed for the fringes of the place, on the off chance he wasn’t really alone. Crows watched him from their perches in silence. One or two fluttered down in his wake, pecking at the dry, dead ground, as if trying to see if his boots had left any splattered gore behind. 

Aside from the yellow-green light that permeated the area from a moon he could barely make out, there were a handful of flaming oil drums scattered around the yard. They burned bright and sick, the flames almost greasy-looking. He made his way to one tucked away in a little cove of busted metal and settled himself on the hood of the nearest hollowed car. It creaked dangerously, but held. 

Danny watched the fire for a while. He had no idea if this plan would work, or if he’d just wind up stabbing at nothing. But there wasn’t exactly a downside to it. The whole thing was a _what-if?_ of moderate proportions. Would the Entity understand him? Would it understand what he wanted? There was only one way to find out. 

Eventually, he reached up and hooked his fingers in the slip under his hood. It was a fairly soft, light material, sleek and silent against his skin and hair. He’d learned very early on that just putting a mask on was a surefire way to getting revealed, because no mask in the world had a strap strong enough to put up with someone trying to rip the fucking thing off his face. He’d bought the material, and stitched it into something like a ski mask without a face, and then hot glued it to the inside of the mask. The hem of it he could tuck under his hood and coat. The much heavier leather held it in place. It had worked perfectly for years. 

But it wasn’t flawless, and _she_ had proved that when despite all her weaknesses she’d managed to rip it off him. Now he tugged that much more gently to free it from the grip of his coat and slip it off, baring his face to a world that couldn’t have cared less to see it. 

Danny set the mask aside and reached into an inner pocket of his coat to produce a worn-out string with a skull on the end. It was small, only a little bigger than his fist, and carved out of blackened wood, and oozing a sense of malice that soaked into his gloves and sank into the skin underneath. He curled his fingers around it. Let the feeling - the bloody, malicious _hunger_ \- seethe in his hand. Then he brought it up to his face and pressed his knuckles against his mouth. 

“I don’t want their lives,” he murmured into it, staring unblinkingly at the blazing barrel in front of him. “I don’t want any life. I don’t want blood. I want a favor.” 

The fire burned. The world around him stayed unchanged. Even the crows weren’t paying attention to him any more. 

“One gift.” His voice was low and flat and cold, but intent. Focused. “I want to take it off her and I want to keep it when the trial ends. Not a copy. The real thing. I want what’s _hers_.” He paused, a thought worming its way to the front of his mind. “I’ll give them all to you until then, but let me have this when I find her.” 

Flames flickered. He watched them without seeing. 

In general, Danny didn’t take trophies. Oh, he’d been tempted a few times; there’d been the girl who figured out he was stalking her and decided to _confront_ him instead of calling the police, and the guy back in Philly who, on seeing an armed intruder in his house poised and ready to kill, had _charged_ him and tried to strangle him on the spot. They’d both impressed him in their own ways, and standing in the bloody aftermath he’d considered taking something to remember them by. 

But he hadn’t. Because as gratifying as a trophy was, it was also damning evidence. He carried his life in a bag, and if he’d ever lost it, or it had gotten stolen, or the cops got edgy enough to try and stop him while he was on the way out of town and searched it - it would have ended his career, sent him straight to prison without even a ten-minute stop in a courtroom along the way. No, it had always been a better idea to leave their things behind as a memento for the living to cry over. 

Here, he didn’t have to worry about evidence. In the same vein that it didn’t really matter that she’d seen his face, it didn’t really matter if someone caught him with something of _hers_. None of the other killers would care. None of the other survivors could do anything about it. There was no real risk to this move; either he’d get what he wanted, or he wouldn’t, and all he’d be out was an offering. 

He took a breath and tossed the skull into the flames. It landed in the burning oil, floated for a few seconds, then flared a bright, blinding white and burnt to ashes in an instant. Acrid smoke drifted up over the fire’s heat and vanished in the gloom above. 

Danny grinned, thin and cold as a knife in the dark. It wasn’t necessarily a guarantee he’d get what he wanted, but it was a good sign regardless. 

He pulled his mask back on, slid off the car, and stalked off into the darkness, letting the fog close around him as he went. 

After a while a space nearby, not quite in sync with the world around it, shifted.  
  


* * *

  
The last trial with Ghost Face haunted Yui, but she did her best not to let it show. 

“I’m fine. I promise,” Claudette had told her when they got back. Once Yui had died, she said, Ghost Face just dragged her to another hook and dropped her on it without a word; he hadn’t kept hurting her. It was a relief, but only so much of one. 

After all, it meant that not only was he still mad about what she’d done, he wasn’t above taking it out on the others to try and get back at her. All the survivors had was each other, and for someone like her, watching them get hurt or tortured _because_ of her was like a knife to the throat. Of course he would have found the worst way to get to her in a hurry. 

“He can’t do that forever, though,” said Meg, after she’d told the others. “Even they have to obey rules in there. If they could just torture us as long as they wanted, we would have found that out by now.” 

“I don’t want to find out how far they can push those rules.” 

“So don’t give him the chance.” Nea propped herself up on a log. “If he tries it? Do what you did. Just die right there.” 

“And if he keeps going so I can find out about it later?” 

“He didn’t that time. Why do it now? Plus, we know what to look out for.” She smirked. “If we all blow him off, he’ll give up.” 

And … that seemed to be the group’s consensus. If they were all in on it, he couldn’t do much about it. If they all just let themselves bleed out before he could hook them, things _would_ go wrong for him eventually. And then he couldn’t use them to get back at Yui. It was a frankly disturbing line of thought, but it was also probably the only one that was going to work. 

Unfortunately, there was no way to guarantee that unless she actually got stuck in a trial with him again. And for a while, she didn’t. It should have been a good thing. It _was_ a good thing. She didn’t want to deal with him ever again. What the others said, when they came back from trials with him, wasn’t encouraging. He was still stalking them for way too long before going after them. Watching them. Counting them. Looking for her. 

“I hate this,” she muttered as she and Claudette sorted through a few half-used medkits to try and even out the supplies. “I already had a stalker once. I don’t want another one.” 

“You did?” Claudette glanced up at her. “What happened?” 

“He kept turning up in places I didn’t want to see him. Tried to _confess_ to me. I told him to fuck off, so he broke into my apartment and stole my shit.” She snorted. “And then of course the cops wouldn’t do anything about it, the useless assholes.” 

“That’s awful. Did he ever get caught?” 

“Yeah. When he broke in again with a knife.” She saw Claudette freeze, her hand locked around a roll of bandages Yui had to tug free from her grip. “I managed to get it away from him, though, and _that_ time the cops were willing to believe me. Last I heard, his ass was still in prison.” 

“Good.” Claudette sighed. “Too bad there’s no police here. Well … there’s David, but he can’t do much.” 

“Huh? Oh, the detective. Right. Yeah. Nothing we can do here except hope there’s a way to put my fist through his face and make him give up.” Yui shut one medkit and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to get his stupid mask off.” 

“Well … maybe not,” Claudette agreed, which made Yui grimace. “But it was better than just letting him hurt or kill you. At least now we know it can happen. And now _he_ knows it, too.” 

“I’m not so sure about that. It’s not like death sticks around here.” 

“Still.” They sorted through the supplies a little longer before Claudette looked up at her. “You said that stalker stole from you? What did he take?” 

“My hachimaki,” she said. Her hand came up almost automatically to brush against the one tied around her other arm. She’d used it as a makeshift bandage more times than she could count, but it came back good as new every time, free of any bloodstains. “It was my grandfather’s, from when he was a racer. My grandmother gave it to me when I left.” She saw Claudette’s faintly puzzled expression and realized the word hadn’t translated; around here they could all understand each other, another one of the Entity’s _gifts_ , but sometimes things didn’t always go through right. “They’re headbands. Supposed to keep your spirit up and give you courage. Mine was more a good luck charm, since I didn’t wear it right.” 

“Did you get it back?” 

“No.” Her hand clenched around the pink cloth. “They never found it at his apartment. So the girls got me a new one. Custom made, too, and they all signed it.” 

“Your gang?” Claudette smiled, a little restrained; she’d never quite been comfortable with the idea that Yui had run a gang, even though she’d reassured her they hadn’t really fit the definition of a _gang_ gang. 

“Yeah. The original six.” 

Yui sat back on her heels and untied the hachimaki from around her arm. She’d used it mostly as an armband in her time before the fog snatched her away, and on the rare occasions she actually wore a helmet, as a headband to keep the sweat from dripping into her eyes; now she unfolded it and looked over the fine black stitching and marker signatures. 

Homesickness welled up in her throat as she looked at it, but she forced it back. They’d still be waiting for her, even now. She knew it. They _had_ to be. And one day, she’d get back to them. 

“It’s pretty,” Claudette said, looking at it with her. “What does the writing say?” 

“Fall down seven times, get up eight.” She felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t let failure stop you.” 

“It’s good advice. Especially around here.” 

Yui sighed and tied it back around her arm, knotting it tight. It _was_ good advice, and she’d be damned if she ever gave up on it, but this place was very, very good at wearing people down. Even her. And now she had this whole new problem to deal with. 

“We don’t always fail around here,” Claudette added, shutting the other medkits. “I mean, you proved they’re fallible in ways we never really thought about.” 

“Yeah, but when we do, it’s nasty, isn’t it?” Yui helped her tuck them back in the shadows behind one of the log benches. “And it’s not like they have to deal with the same kind of miserable bullshit we do when they make a mistake.” 

“We don’t know that for sure.” Claudette glanced around the campfire. “I’ve heard things about them, and seen things, that … I don’t think the Entity really likes them any more than it likes us.” 

“Really?” Yui said, deadpan. “Because it sure as hell doesn’t feel that way.” 

Claudette sighed and shrugged, giving her a half-smile that said she probably felt differently but wasn’t in the mood to argue about it. 

“We’ll never really know. It’s not like we can ask them about it.”  
  


* * *

  
Things could go bad in a hurry in any trial, but this time they started off at rock bottom. 

Yui hadn’t been creeping around the forest for more than thirty seconds before she saw him stalking through the gloom: black coat fluttering, white mask fixed dead ahead, knife gleaming like the severed tooth of some nightmarish monster. She ducked down behind a crate but when he wasn’t on her in seconds, she peeked back over to see him vanishing through the trees. 

She didn’t keep her eyes on him long. He could tell when they were watching him no matter where they were. He’d be on the move for a while, which gave them at least a little time to get generators started, if not finished. That had been a problem for him so far. Too much stalking, too much looking for _her_ , cost him time and let too many of them escape. 

In an effort to keep her distance and stay hidden, Yui found a generator hidden behind a couple out-of-place walls and got to work on it. It wasn’t a guarantee of safety. It would let him stay hidden, too, if he found her; she’d turn around and see him peering around the wall like the creepy fuck he was if she wasn’t careful. But it would keep her out of his line of sight for what she hoped was long enough to get things done. 

She’d brought a key with her this time. They were rare and valuable, but half the group agreed she needed it more than anyone else on the off chance she was stuck with him again and he tried to pull the same shit he had last time. So Yui had clipped it to her belt and held onto it through a few trials, managing to scrape her way out of each one alive, and things had started to settle down. 

But of course that couldn’t last forever. She just hoped she didn’t need to use it this time. She didn’t _want_ to be the last one left alive, frantically trying to find the way out after he slammed it shut on her. 

Time crawled. The generator choked to life under her fingers. She kept glancing back, looking around, trying to make sure she wasn’t being watched, and that slowed her down. With the rest of the killers they got warnings - well, with _most_ of them, anyway - but he could hide all but the sound of his coat when he moved, and with the trees rustling overhead and the generators grinding and their own breath and heartbeat heavy in their ears, listening for someone’s clothing was pretty much impossible. 

Somewhere she heard a generator start up in full. Good. That meant someone, or two someones, were safe enough. It would also draw his attention away from where she was - it _should have_ drawn his attention away from where she was, but she got the uneasy feeling he didn’t care much about generators right now. 

There was a sound like silk. She froze, then whipped around, but there was nothing behind her. Her heart pounding in her throat, she crept around the edge of the wall and glanced out to see more nothing. No sneaking bodies, no flicker of black leather. 

She turned the other direction and jumped when she saw someone in black heading toward her, but it was just Jeff, creeping at speed. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back into the relative safety of the walls. 

“It’s him,” he said. 

“I know. I saw him.” 

“Okay.” Jeff glanced at the generator. “Let’s try and finish this one, then get you somewhere safe.” 

“There isn’t anywhere safe,” she pointed out as they got back to work on the generator. “Except on the other side of the gates.” 

“We can hide you in plain sight. In the basement, maybe.” She grimaced. “It’s not the best idea, but do you think he’s going to look for you there?” 

“I can’t just wait around and do nothing. Even if the crows don’t find me, I’m not leaving the rest of you to him.” 

“We’re not the ones he wants to gut like a fish.” 

“And I don’t want him to get mad enough to change his mind because you got in the way. If we stick together, we can at least get these generators done fast and get out as a group.” 

He sighed through his nose, but didn’t argue any more. They were both right, after all. 

The generator started up a minute later. They both made their way out of the box of walls, rounded the corner, and almost came face to face with Ghost Face as he rounded a tree. 

“Run! Go!” Jeff yelled, shoving her away as he came at them, knife upraised. For once she didn’t argue; Yui turned and ran, trying to weave between the trees in the hopes that she’d vanish behind one when he tried to follow her. She heard Jeff following, keeping himself between her and danger, and - 

He yelled. A direct hit, one that drove him out from between them, and one that would slow Ghost Face down but not for long enough. Now he knew she was here. Now he could try to get rid of them and leave her alone so he could finish the job. Dread crawled up through her as her imagination betrayed her and presented a whole slew of pictures of what he might be planning to do next. 

But then she realized she could still hear footsteps, and glanced back to see him still following her. He _hadn’t_ gone after Jeff - was he just going to kill her now and get it over with? Risk being found and blinded? 

She cut between two rocks and dropped the pallet behind her. It didn’t hit him, but one way or another, it would slow him down. She saw Zarina picking through the grass in the distance. She looked up at the sound of running, saw Yui, saw Ghost Face, and waved a hand. A hand with a flashlight in it. 

Yui beelined for her. Even a mask didn’t protect the monsters from losing their sight. 

“Quick! Get inside!” She pointed to the crumbling mine behind her, and Yui didn’t even hesitate; she bolted past Zarina and into the unlikely safety of rotting wood walls. Seconds later she heard Zarina scream as the knife found her next, and then … 

Her own heartbeat was still running fast, but the louder one, overpowering everything, faded out. 

There was no way he hadn’t seen her going in the building. That was a fact. But she was alone now, just like last time. He was hunting someone else. Was he planning the same thing as before? Then why chase her at all once he’d hit Jeff? 

It was impossible to know how the killers thought. There were a hundred, a thousand different things he could be trying to do. Maybe he’d given up on trying to _punish_ her for getting his mask off and was just back to his usual bullshit. 

Somehow it didn’t seem likely. 

When there were no more signs that he was making his way back toward her, Yui made her way out of the mine and toward the nearest generator. It was half-finished, sparking even as she knelt down by it and nudged the wires back into place. Just keep going, she told herself. Just keep fixing these things. Get everyone to safety. Make that asshole realize he’s building a rope out of sand here. 

She flinched at a scream - Zarina, either cut down or on a hook. She knew Jeff would be heading that way so she stayed where she was and tried to finish putting things back in order. She could feel sweat trickling down her face, an ache in her knee where it pressed into the unforgiving ground, and a constant, nagging feeling of _what if what if what if_ at the back of her skull like a knife carving into glass. 

For a while there was silence. No screams, no pain, just her and the generator; in the distance she saw a light come on, another generator back in action. Three down. Hers finally caught and came to life for good, making it four down. She sighed with relief and stood up. 

Ghost Face was ten feet away, watching her from behind a tree. 

She froze. The instinct to run had her trembling, but as she stared at him and he slowly stood up from his crouch, she felt the anger coming back, a red wave of sharp hot hatred for him and everything he’d ever done. A hundred insults choked her. Her hands curled into fists. 

The last time she’d taken a stand, she’d started this mess. Maybe she could end it the same way. 

“What the hell do you want?” she snarled. 

He didn’t answer. He’d gone back to taunting everybody else during trials, they said, but only once he’d figured out she wasn’t there. To her, the last thing he’d said was a dare, hissed in a tone of voice that made her wince to remember. It didn’t look like he was planning to change that. 

“I’m still not afraid of you.” It was probably a really stupid thing to say, but she’d never been the sort to hold back when she was pissed off. “There’s nothing you can do that’s going to change that.” 

He tilted his head, watching her. She fixed him with a glare and waited to hear the sound of the last generator getting finished. 

“Are you sure about that?” he said, and then he was gone. 

She stared at the place where he’d been. 

No, she wasn’t sure about that. But she had to act like it. Had to make him think there really was nothing left he could do to her to make her run from him for any reason other than the base terror that this place inspired in them. And right now, watching the shadows shift, she got the terrible, gut-punched feeling that he knew that as well as she did. 

This time the scream she heard in the distance was Meg, and as her mind careened down the path of _what might happen_ she thought it sounded more agonized than before. Yui turned and ran toward it, knowing that was bringing her closer to Ghost Face and not caring. She could get around him, maybe. Pull Meg down off the hook or distract him long enough for Jeff to do it for her. He’d be there, she knew; he was always there when someone was caught. 

They met almost at the hook, trying to stay hidden as Ghost Face dropped Meg on it and vanished into the trees again. He glanced over at her. 

“You’re still okay?” 

“Yeah. For now.” She grit her teeth. “We need to go.” 

“Zarina’s on the last generator. I’ll get Meg. Find one of the doors and get ready to open it.” 

She nodded, and headed away, and flinched when she heard Zarina scream again, too far away for her to take a risk. She followed the wall until she heard someone behind her, but it only took a few seconds for her to realize it was Meg, sent after her by Jeff. 

“The generator’s not done yet,” Meg managed, one hand clutching the hole in her chest like grim death. “We don’t have a way out.” 

“I’ve got that key and we’re four down. Either those two will finish it or we’ll find the hatch.” Yui reached into her jacket pocket for bandages. “Come on. We’ll find the door and get you patched up.” 

The closest door wasn’t too far away. It loomed over them, dark and silent, as they crouched nearby and Yui wrapped up Meg’s injury as best she could. How they could keep going with something like that was a mystery, but as they’d told her, it was probably all down to the Entity. If they were crippled by one blow, they couldn’t play its nasty little game well enough to satisfy, and so it gave them their own kind of strength. 

“Did you get hurt?” Meg asked as Yui tugged the bandages tight and tucked one end under the rest. 

“No. He’s … ” She stopped, not because she didn’t have the right words but because she didn’t know what the hell he was doing. 

“Trying to leave you for last?” Meg finished for her. 

“Probably.” 

“He left it too long, then. He can’t get all of us now, and you’ll be the first one out the door.” 

“I hope so.” She glanced back just in time for a light to go on somewhere deeper in the forest. 

The siren that told them the doors were ready to go rang out overhead, clear and such a huge relief she stood up and headed for the switch without even glancing around. Meg followed her and took it before she could. 

“Just get ready to run,” she said, and yanked down on it. 

The door creaked and clanked. The warning alarm cut through the air, too loud to be safe. She shifted in place, rocking on her heels, waiting for it to open, waiting to get out. It was taking too long. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jeff and Zarina heading their way. She let out a breath and smiled, turned to say something, and then everything went wrong. 

She felt her whole body seize with panic, the only warning they ever had before they took a single blow that downed them. It froze her in place, and Jeff, close at hand, saw the sudden terror on her face. 

She looked over. Already stalking out of the trees, his knife up for the kill, was Ghost Face. 

The door wasn’t open yet. 

Jeff charged Ghost Face, who slashed at him, sending him stumbling back toward the door. Yui caught him and pulled him away. Meg kept the switch pulled but her attention was on the chaos; Yui could hear her mumbling at the door, trying to convince a mindless hunk of metal to _open_. 

Ghost Face wiped the blood off his knife and came at her again. Jeff tried to push her away but Zarina got in front of them first, and already injured as she was, she went down instantly with a cry. 

“Hurry up!” Meg screamed at the door. 

The lights above them went on and the door rumbled open, revealing the old familiar path out and the endless gray fog beyond that. If they could make it past that point, they’d be safe. _She’d_ be safe. Yui shoved Jeff toward the path out, Meg rushing alongside, and was about to make for the way out when she glanced back at Zarina. 

Ghost Face had stepped over her, but she was scrabbling at his ankle, trying to slow him down. Her nails caught his boot and slid right off, and as Yui looked up, she saw the knife coming down too fast to dodge. 

It hit her. She hit the ground. Meg and Jeff looked back in time to see her fall. They both stopped, started to come back, but Ghost Face stalked past her and came for them; Meg grabbed Jeff’s arm and dragged him over the threshold to safety, her expression agonized. 

It was never easy to leave someone to die. And while Yui felt the usual satisfaction of having denied the asshole above her everyone’s life, cold fear was closing down on her mind, making it hard to breathe. 

Ghost Face watched them run for a second before turning back to her. She could hear Zarina swearing at him, telling him to _come get me, asshole_! But he reached down for Yui first, slung her over his shoulder without a word and strode back into the forest. 

“Go,” she choked out as they passed Zarina, but as they went she saw her try to turn around and crawl back onto the grounds. There were ways to get up, ways to overcome the pain and get back in action, and maybe, _maybe_ Zarina had figured one of those out even though she hadn’t been here that long. Maybe they could still escape. 

To her surprise, Ghost Face didn’t drop her somewhere too far away from the door for her to escape and then go back to find a hook for Zarina. He found a hook for _her_ and put her on it, a move practiced and casual and so agonizing she screamed. And then … 

… he walked away. Back toward the door, back toward Zarina. Yui watched him go until he was out of sight. 

Maybe, she thought, he _wasn’t_ still focused on her. Maybe he’d given up. Maybe everything was just one big taunt, trying to scare her while she didn’t know what he was doing. Trying to find a way to make her understand fear. She wouldn’t put it past him. 

Just like the last time, she reached up to grab at the hook above her head, to see if she could get a good enough grip on it to rip her way free. And just like the last time she saw him come back with someone over his shoulder, but instead of trying to torture her, he walked into the shadows and the trees and found another hook; seconds later she heard Zarina give half a yelp before going silent. 

And then he came back. 

He wasn’t stalking, wasn’t creeping. She watched him come closer, neither one of them speaking. He looked her over and she kicked at him, ineffectively. 

He came in from the side and reached up to tug at the tied end of her hachimaki. 

“Don’t touch that,” she hissed. He ignored her and started to undo the knot. She jerked her arm, tried to keep him away, but he grabbed it and forced her still while he managed to loosen it enough to pull free with his other hand. 

She glared at him as he looked it over, running a thumb across the stitching. She’d lost it in trials before - sometimes as a bandage on someone who ended up dead, sometimes torn by a weapon, sometimes as a way to try and distract a killer so she could make a break for it - and it had always ended up back on her arm when she wound up back at the campfire. Watching him manhandle it made her angry enough that the pain took a backseat. 

“That doesn’t scare me,” she spat. “You’re just pissing me off.” 

He wrapped it around his hand and looked up at her. Overhead, she could almost _feel_ the claws coming for her, and there wouldn’t be any time to defend herself now that she was the last one alive. 

“Go fuck yourself, freak,” she snarled. 

He watched as the claws materialized and came down around to stab her, going through her chest and stomach, killing her almost instantly. Her vision blacked out seconds before the rest of her stopped, and the last thing she thought was _fucking asshole_  
  


* * *

  
Someone was saying her name, urgently. A man. She frowned. Why would a man be trying to get her attention? Especially one who sounded worried about her. She didn’t have many friends who were men; most of the guys she dealt with on an everyday basis were either afraid of her, or hated her for being better than them … 

… but that was back in the real world, not here in the fog. Here she actually knew guys that weren’t total assholes, or at least _unforgivable_ assholes. 

It took her a second longer to realize that it was Jeff, just at her side, a hand on her shoulder. Trying to snap her out of the mental fog that dying always left them with. She looked up at him blearily. 

“Yui? Tell me you’re okay.” 

“I’m … fine,” she said. And then everything came crashing back down on her and she blinked, grabbing at her shoulder where the fresh memory of pain suddenly started pulsing. “Ow. I’m fine.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Yeah, I’m sure.” She pulled her hand away. There was no blood, but then again, there never was. 

“He didn’t do anything to you after we left?” 

“No. He just hooked me and watched me die.” 

Jeff sighed with relief. On her other side she felt Claudette do the same, and across the fire, both Meg and Zarina looked like a weight had just dropped off their shoulders. 

“God, I’m so glad,” Meg said as Jeff went back to his place by the fire. “I didn’t want to leave you there, but he was coming for us.” 

“That was for the best. Don’t let him get everyone just to try and save me.” Yui sighed heavily, then glanced at Zarina. “Why didn’t you go?” 

“I wouldn’t have gotten out before he found me. I thought maybe I could distract him for long enough that you could jump off.” 

“It might have worked. It’s just … hard to pull it off.” And painful, and unlikely. The hooks _dragged_. “He just tried to taunt me again like the asshole he is.” She snorted and reached up, putting her hand over her hachimaki where it was tied around her arm. 

Where it should have been tied around her arm. 

Her fingers closed over her sleeve, the black leather as sleek and soft as ever and decidedly not wrapped in custom-stitched linen. She felt further up and down her arm, trying to find it; all she found was more jacket. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Claudette as Yui felt along her other arm and then in all her pockets more and more frantically. She stood up, patted down her pants pockets, hoping that if she just kept looking she’d find it in a pocket she’d already found empty once. She reached up to her head and only felt her goggles, snatched those off and didn’t see anything tied around the strap. 

Panic formed a tight knot in her stomach. Trials weren’t supposed to change them. Not physically. Wounds didn’t stay, poisons didn’t linger. Their clothes might have gotten more worn down and tattered over time but they were always still there. Things didn’t go missing. They weren’t _supposed_ to go missing. 

A picture flickered in her mind’s eye: Ghost Face, watching her die, the bright band of pink around the black glove on his hand standing out in the cold, dark, miserable forest he’d hunted her through. 

“He took it,” she breathed, disbelief and anger and a choking feeling of helplessness welling up in her throat, making her face hot and her eyes prickle with tears. “That asshole! He _stole_ it! And that fucking monster let him _keep_ it!”


	5. Chapter 5

The realization that Ghost Face had taken something from Yui, maybe permanently, made unease roll around the campfire. 

The most any of the killers had ever taken from them before was their lives, and sometimes their organs. Anything lost or broken in a trial always turned up in one piece afterward, although in the case of the organs, there was always a faint ache for a while afterward. 

Even the medkits and toolboxes, the maps and keys and flashlights, could end up back in their hands if they played their cards right, but losing those was more of an inconvenience than painful. They weren’t personal. They didn’t have any worth beyond what help they could give in a trial. 

That they might be able to lose things for good was a brand new threat. It was true that they didn’t have much with them at any given time, but losing what little they _did_ have was a worrying blow. 

“They’re not supposed to be able to do that.” Jane stared into the campfire, her hands clasped in front of her face. “We need what we have. It keeps us playing this stupid game right.” 

“He did it anyway,” said Dwight. The fear of losing his glasses had him more on edge than some of the others. “And who knows if the rest of them will pick up on _how?_ ” 

“Then let’s figure it out! Catch one of ‘em and beat them up until they talk.”

“When has that ever worked, David?” asked Kate. 

“Never know when it might. Can’t hurt to try.” 

“It can hurt a lot. Do it if you want, but I’m not savin’ you if it bites you in the ass.” 

Yui was barely listening. She was staring at the ground, her thoughts scrambled, her whole world narrowed down to one point of furious hurt.

The first time she’d lost something so valuable it had been a different kind of pain. He’d broken into her apartment, touched who knew how much of her stuff, and run off with the only thing that connected her to her family. It had been a violation of her privacy and her safety and when he’d come back _again_ , armed this time, she’d done the only thing she could think of and attacked him. He’d gone to prison, unlikely to get out again while she was still in Nagoya, and she’d had the girls there to help support her, and they’d given her something new to hold close to her heart. A reminder that she had a new life and a new family that would never demand she sacrifice what she loved to live up to _tradition_. 

Here, there wasn’t so much of a violation; they didn’t have any real private or personal space. But he’d known, somehow, that she cherished it. That taking it away from her would be one of the worst things he could do without actually laying a hand on her or anybody else. Like when he’d broken Claudette’s glasses, it was an insult, and a way to prove to her that she really _didn’t_ have any power in this place. 

But why hadn’t it come back with her? If he’d just run off with it in the trial, used it to try and lure her around, it would have been bad enough, but _she’d still have it_. So why wasn’t it here? Why did the Entity let him keep it? 

Claudette was by her side, a hand on her arm, listening to the conversation going on over the campfire. She hadn’t said anything. There wasn’t much to say. She couldn’t do anything to change what had happened, and unlike Yui, she wasn’t the kind to offer violence as revenge. 

“I don’t understand.” She looked at her hands, at the roadburn scars and the slightly chipped polish on her nails. “How did he know that was anything more than just something I wore?” 

“He _is_ a stalker,” Claudette said. “He probably overheard you talking about it. Or … maybe he just guessed. Maybe he’s waiting to see if you try to take it back.” 

“I’m _going_ to.” She meant it to be a snarl, but it came out more like a mumble. “He doesn’t get to keep that. I’ll die a million more times if it means I get it back.” 

“Maybe if you don’t, he’ll just give it back?” It didn’t sound very confident. “If he thinks it isn’t bothering you, he might try a new tactic.” 

“Do I _want_ him to try a new tactic? He could go after you again.” 

“He can’t keep any of us hostage.” 

“No. I’m not risking it. And I’m not risking him shredding it because he thinks I don’t care.” 

The thought was too painful to even consider. And he’d do it, she knew. He was spiteful. If he thought whatever he’d done to get that off her, and it must have cost him _something_ to get the Entity on his side, hadn’t been worth it? He’d destroy it. Anyone petty and pathetic enough to break someone’s glasses and send them running wouldn’t even think twice about destroying a piece of cloth. 

She let out a sigh. There was a shudder in it that made her clench her teeth, hard. Claudette’s hand tightened on her arm, trying to be a point of comfort. 

“We’ll figure out a way to get it back.” 

“Yeah. I’m sure.” 

“We will. We have to.” 

Yui knew she was trying to be reassuring, and since she considered Claudette the one person here she was really close to, she didn’t say the words that drifted onto her tongue. 

“Yeah? If _I_ see his ass next, I’m gonna rip him in half,” said David. The conversation about what had happened and why it shouldn’t be possible had continued while they were talking, but it hadn’t progressed much. 

“You can’t. This place won’t let you.” 

“I’ll fuckin’ make it.” 

“David, please stop talking.” Jane gave him a cool look. “If you see him, try to stun him and take it back. You know violence isn’t going to work.” 

“Always worked before,” he grumbled. 

Around the campfire, people were taking stock of what they had on hand. Most of them didn’t have anything they considered worthwhile. Dwight and Claudette had glasses. Ace had his sunglasses, which even he had eventually admitted only slowed him down in a realm of infinite night. Zarina’s digital recorder hadn’t worked since she’d arrived, but she was staring at it doubtfully anyway. Ash’s entire right hand might have been in danger, but he didn’t look worried. 

All this because she’d tried to find a loophole in the fact that they couldn’t fight back. All this because of a mask. Yui watched everyone figure out what to do, reminding each other to tell the missing members of their shared nightmare about this, and felt like someone had dropped a mountain on her.

* * *

  
She didn’t have any trials for a while. At first she thought the Entity was trying to go easy on her, and then she thought it was leaving her to stew in her own misery. In truth it probably didn’t care one way or another. Sometimes someone would sit by the campfire as trial after trial passed, never finding themselves pulled away, and sometimes someone barely had time to sit down before they were snatched away again. 

Eventually she landed on ‘leaving her to stew’, because the next time she ended up in a trial it was with Ghost Face again. 

It was Adam who warned her, pointing to where he’d seen the bastard running, and as soon as she heard that all her misery caught fire and burned into anger. Left by the campfire she had no one to rail against, nowhere to direct her anger, and nobody trying to piss her off deliberately; out in a trial, she had outlets for all of that. 

She ran across the grounds, ignoring generators, hooks, pallets - everything. She knew he’d hear her. She wanted him to hear her. She wanted him to find her, because at this rate, she wasn’t going to find him. 

Eventually she did see him, stalking through the shadows, his attention clearly on someone else. For a second she considered yelling at him, but instead she just stopped and stared. It didn’t take him long to realize she was there and turn. 

“Give it back,” she snarled. 

“Give what back?” he asked, voice so light and friendly he could have been normal if it hadn’t been for all the bloodstained leather. 

“Don’t play dumb. Give it back or I’ll take it back!” 

“How, exactly?” There was no more danger in his voice, no more deeply unsettling silence between them; he was back on his bullshit and worse than ever. “You’ll attack me? Beat my face in? Break all my ribs? Oh, wait. You can’t.” 

“I’ll find a way.” 

“No you won’t.” He flipped his knife in his hand, making sure she saw the glint of the blade even in the shadows. “You never will. You can’t. That’s not how this works. The only things you can do here are fix those generators, and help your friends, and run to try and save your life.” 

He lifted the knife. She watched it, a trickle of fear running down her spine. 

“And speaking of … I think you’d better get on that.” 

He charged at her. And despite everything - all her anger, all her hatred, all the things she wanted to do to him if she ever got her hands on a wrench - the fear seized her, made her turn, made her _run_ because while her mind might not have cared what happened, it was in a body that valued still being in one non-perforated piece by the time the trial ended. 

The rest of the trial went like normal, as far as normal had ever been. She just barely made it out because he was busier making sure Adam didn’t. Back at the campfire, people were sympathetic, but at the same time they tried to point out that at least he wasn’t trying to torture her to death anymore. 

“I don’t care. I want it back,” she told them. 

Some of the others tried to get it back for her when she tried. Even David, who she was constantly at odds with, gave it a shot, though in his case it was probably more looking for an opportunity to attack a killer than to actually help her. He smashed a pallet on Ghost Face so hard it shattered, apparently, but didn’t find anything when he tried to search the bastard. And then he’d gotten a knife almost to the neck. 

Another trial went past for her and she still didn’t have it. Yui knew she’d have to take it back by force, but she had no idea how. He’d been right: they could only do so much in a trial, and unless he handed it back to her, she wouldn’t be able to take it. And why would he hand it over? He’d stolen it for a reason. 

She couldn’t figure anything out. She’d thought her life had been complicated before this place, but it was incredible how easily _run hide die_ could suddenly be completely unmanageable. 

Claudette’s support was about the only thing keeping her from grabbing a tree branch and going off on the next person who implied she should be grateful for not dying again, but Claudette wasn’t always around. And so that left Yui sitting alone by the campfire, along with a handful of others trying to relax and recuperate before their next trial. She glared into the flames, trying to decipher some kind of code from them. 

Movement caught her eye. She glanced up. 

Jake was making his way over toward her from his permanent place on the other side of the fire. He crossed over behind the log benches and settled down next to her. 

As much as she generally didn’t like men, the guys at the campfire had grown on her, and Jake was no exception to that. She knew virtually nothing about him, but that wasn’t unique; he wasn’t much of a talker, particularly about himself. Claudette had told her he’d been there with her and Meg and Dwight when it was just the four of them. He used to talk more, she said, but as more and more people started showing up, he’d lapsed into silence. 

He was a loner. A survivalist. Apparently his father was the head of some huge corporation. He’d grown up in luxury, never having to struggle for anything, and the pressure to live up to expectations, to _conform_ , had been too much for him to deal with. So he’d run away and made his own life in the middle of the forest, cut off from the rest of the world. 

She could sympathize. 

He was just far enough away from her that they weren’t touching, but not far enough that she couldn’t hear him when he started to speak in quiet tones. 

“You really want to get that back?” 

“Do I look like I’m joking?” She glared at him, but he was staring into the fire. 

“Just want to make sure.” He paused for a few long seconds, making her give him another uncertain look. He wouldn’t be here unless he had something to say. “I might be able to help you.” 

“Yeah? How? Don’t tell me you’re going to do what David did.” 

“No. There’s no way you can get it back in a trial.” 

And there was something to the way he said it. _In a trial …_

“You think I can find him out there?” She jerked a thumb at the darkness beyond them. She knew, like they all did, that if they went far enough from the light of the campfire they’d find the fog that kept them imprisoned outside trials. She also knew that sometimes going into the fog landed them somewhere else, not just on the other side of the clearing. It was usually a very, very bad thing, and half the time it ended in death or worse. 

“Yeah.” Jake nodded and turned his head to look at her. “There’s a way to use the fog to your advantage. It doesn’t always work, and you might just get killed, but if you really want to find him somewhere you can take it back, it’s your best bet.” 

“How?” 

“Find the fog.” There wasn’t much of an expression on his face, but the firelight reflected in his eyes as he looked at her. “Stand in front of it. Fix your mind on exactly what you want to find and step in. Then walk until it lifts.” 

“And that’ll work? It’ll get me to him?” 

“It might.” He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “If it does, it’ll just be you and him. He can still kill you out there, but you can fight back.” 

Yui went quiet. The idea of being on even terms - okay, _slightly closer to_ even terms - with the stalker and killer who’d stolen from her was thrilling, vindicating, and more than a little terrifying. Once he figured out she could brain him he’d probably be on the offensive. But he’d know right away, wouldn’t he? That they weren’t bound by rules outside trials? 

It was her only option. She wasn’t going to give up and cry over the loss, or keep trying uselessly to harass him until he gave it back. She’d find him. She’d take it from him, and give him something _else_ to remember her by. 

“Okay. I’ll try it. Thanks.” She smiled slightly, but it dropped almost right away. “How do you know about that? I thought getting lost in the fog was always an accident.” 

“I use it to find stuff sometimes. Toolboxes. Medkits.” He looked back at the fire, his expression so flat it made her suspicious. “And maybe one of these days I’ll find the way out.” 

There were a hundred questions she could have asked him, but he probably wasn’t going to answer. Besides, he’d just given her something to do other than sit around uselessly and obsess over what she’d lost. 

“All right.” She let out a breath and stood up. “If Claudette gets back before me, tell her I’ll be back soon.” 

“Be careful out there,” Jake said, watching her as she stepped over the log to head into the darkness. “It’s not a guarantee. If you find someone else, run for it.” 

Run for it. Well, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a lifetime’s worth of experience with that now. She stared into the darkness, at the way the trees turned into thinner and thinner slivers of light until they disappeared altogether, and was about to take a step when something touched her arm. 

She glanced back. Jake was holding a screwdriver up to her, handle first. 

“Just in case,” he said. Yui looked at it, then at him, and smirked. 

“Don’t have a wrench in there, do you?” she asked, taking it and tucking it into her jacket. It didn’t fit perfectly, but it was snug enough between her side and her arm, stuck halfway into an inner pocket. 

“Not that I can spare,” he said, a half-smile flickering across his face. “Just watch yourself.” 

She turned back to the darkness and strode into it. Shadows stretched past her until, like the trees, they disappeared. 

The light and warmth of the campfire was far behind her. Voices didn’t echo this far out. All she could see ahead of her was darkness, just barely illuminated by the stars and firelight reflecting off the clouds above. As her eyes adjusted, she could see just enough to keep her from running into a tree. 

Eventually she saw the fog. 

At the end of a trial, it was just a mist, one that hid the path back as they ran out the gates. Here it was a solid wall, gray and seething, without end no matter what direction she looked. It faded out above a little - she could see the sky stretch past it - but there was no way to get high enough to see over it. The trees nearby all had branches too far out of reach to climb. 

It was the wall of their prison. They could walk forever and it would deposit them back at the campfire, or somewhere else, but never to freedom. Her hands curled into fists as she stared into it, glaring, wondering if Jake was right and somehow she could get the Entity to _listen_ or if this was just going to end up being an embarrassing waste of time, preferably not fatal. 

She fixed her mind on the image of Ghost Face. The black leather coat, the gleaming knife, the bloodsplattered white mask pulled in a soundless, agonized scream. The arrogance, the nastiness, the unstoppable tidal wave of sadism - they all tumbled in after, because they were as much a part of him as the outfit. One made the other. 

Yui took a breath and let it out slowly. 

“Take me to Ghost Face,” she murmured, and stepped into the fog.  
  


* * *

  
It wasn’t silent as she walked. She could hear her own footsteps, slightly muted. There was a rumbling in the distance. Screams, too. Flickers of sounds, some bizarre and alien, some everyday and frightening, some strangely familiar. 

None of them were close at hand. She didn’t feel like she was in any danger. It was like the fog was a crossroads, where everything solid, everything _real_ , or as real as anything got around here, had to filter through. Maybe she was hearing trials going on. Maybe if she went too far, she’d find one. 

But that wasn’t what she was here for. No. She was going to find Ghost Face and take her hachimaki back. Make the asshole regret ever laying a hand on her. She already almost regretted doing it to him, and she hadn’t even stolen the mask for good. 

She tried to keep him fixed in her mind. His anger, her pain, his mocking tone, her burning hatred … anything to keep him fixed, in case the Entity lost track of the idea. 

The fog kept going, never changing, an endless ocean of gray without any kind of markers to tell her where she was or where she was going or even where she’d come from. Uncertainty crept up through her. What if she got lost out here? Walking forever, with no way back to the campfire, because she’d tried to control a force she could barely even imagine - 

A sudden wind brushed her face and blew the fog away. The world opened up around her. 

Overhead there was a dark gray sky, spattered with stars and a bright moon a little more than halfway to full. In every direction there were dead trees. She could smell smoke in the distance, and a little closer at hand, hear faint, tinny carnival music. 

Right in front of her face was the huge stone cathedral they’d learned to dread. It told her she was in the wrong place. She was in the _Clown’s_ territory, and if she was really fucking unlucky he’d be around - 

But … Ghost Face didn’t have his own place, did he? They’d seen him on every trial ground, and all of those had someone who showed up with it. Dwight kept track of it almost religiously. Only two killers had ever showed up without somewhere new to kill them on. Everyone else had somewhere that must have been tied to them. 

Which meant maybe he _was_ here. 

Quietly, she made her way around to one of the broken windows of the church. She peered through, trying to see if there was anything out of place. The whole thing was broken down, falling apart, smashed to pieces and half-burned out, but that was all normal. It was a brightly-lit place, mostly browns and golds and light cast by lamps off stained glass windows. 

It made the black of his coat stand out like a missing knife in a drawer. 

He was lying full-length on one of the pews, one leg off the edge and the other flat on the seat, his posture so relaxed and casual he might as well have been spending a day on a park bench. His knife was in his hand; he was rubbing at the blade with his thumb, like there was a bloodstain on it he couldn’t quite wipe off. 

Anger and anxiety warred in her as she watched him. She could throw the screwdriver, but it would probably miss and cost her a chance. She could sneak in from above, drop down on him like he did to them, but he was looking up; he’d see her. She could try to creep in a window, make her way up through the pews until it was too late for him to dodge, but … that just didn’t seem like it would end well. 

In the end, she went with her gut, and strode in through one of the open archways. Here, it wasn’t partly blocked by debris. Maybe it was different outside a trial; maybe the Clown had cleaned up. 

Her heels rang on what was left of the marble flooring. He looked over, saw her, and paused, totally frozen for two seconds. It was a good start. He hadn’t been expecting her. 

“Isn’t _this_ a surprise,” he said, as lightly as ever. He sat up and looked at her. “How the hell did you find me?” 

“I got lucky.” Much as she preferred honesty, lying wasn’t a problem, especially when faced with monsters like him. Besides, it wasn’t exactly _un_ true. Yui glared at him and set her hands on her hips. “I’m giving you one more chance to give my hachimaki back before I take it back myself.” 

“Really.” Ghost Face leaned back on the pew, arms draped over the back but keeping his knife in full view. “And how, exactly, do you think you’re going to get it back now when you didn’t have even the slightest hope of it before?” 

“Because this isn’t a trial, asshole. I’m not helpless out here.” 

“Oh? Who told you that?” 

“Nobody.” A smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve gotten lost before. I know what I can do. And what I can do to you.” 

He tilted his head and shifted his legs, draping one knee over the other. It was a casual, indefensible position. He didn’t think she was a threat. It made her blood boil, but she tried to restrain that. She wanted him to think she was helpless, after all. 

“I’d love to see you try to do _anything_ to me.” He snickered. “That I don’t ask you to do, anyway. You really are possessive of this thing, aren’t you?” 

Ghost Face reached into his hood where it hid the collar of his jacket and tugged out her hachimaki, bright pink against bloodstained black and gray. She almost lunged at him then and there. 

“It’s mine, shithead! How the hell did you even know I’d get mad if you took it?” 

“Oh, you know. I watch. I listen.” He twisted it between his fingers, watching the way it fell. “It’s unnecessary, but you always have it on you. You use it as a bandage sometimes, but it’s always back on you later. You touch it sometimes when you think you’re alone. Trying to reassure yourself it’s still there.” 

Little things. Tiny things. Movements anybody else would ignore. But he was a stalker, wasn’t he? Her nails dug into her hips, the little spikes of pain keeping her focused. 

“And then there’s the fact that I’ve heard you tell people about it when they ask about it. ‘What’s that for, Yui?’ ‘It’s to keep me focused! It’s to remind me of my friends!’ Any idiot could have figured it out.” 

“Nobody’s ever asked me about it,” she said, but he waved his hand dismissively. 

“Oh yes they have. Not often, but enough. That girl, Zarina? She asked you when you used it to keep her from bleeding out after I took a shot at her arm. She likes to dig, doesn’t she? Reminds me of myself.” 

“Shut up.” Yui felt her teeth grind together and tried to separate them by force. “So you figured it out and thought _that_ was good enough revenge for getting your mask off?” 

“No. But it’s a start.” She saw his fingers clench around the pink cloth. “After all, now you have to spend every second here knowing I’m the one who has it.” 

“It was just a mask!” she snapped, and saw him go still. “I can’t turn you over to the cops here! Half of these assholes don’t even wear a mask, but you’re so fucking neurotic even _one_ person seeing what’s under yours sends you into a tantrum like this?” 

“I’m not neurotic,” he said mildly, but it was the mildness that came as the skies were going dark and there was lightning on the horizon. 

“No. You’re right. You’re not neurotic, you’re insane.” 

“Not that either. You have to have a very clear mind to do what I do.” He flicked the end of the hachimaki in the air and glanced at the scribbled black signatures. “What would you do to get this back?”

“I’d open you up and spread your guts around this place like Christmas decorations.” 

“You could blow me,” he said, and laughed when she sneered at him. “You wouldn’t even consider it, would you? You aren’t into guys.” 

“I’m not into guys _like you_ ,” she snapped, even while some obnoxious little part of her reminded her that she wasn’t really telling the truth about that. 

“Really? Live and learn. Here I thought you were all about girls, but it turns out maybe even Dwight has a chance.” 

“Give me back my hachimaki,” she said, cold and clear and as dangerous as she could manage. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling the reassuring pressure of the screwdriver against her ribs. 

“Hit a nerve, did I? Should I tell Dwight?” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and brought both his knife and the hachimaki up in front of his mask, sliding the cloth over the sharp edge of his blade. Her heart started to race. “Why should I give it back when all you’ve done here is insult me?” 

“Because it’s _mine_ ,” she hissed. 

“All the more reason to keep it.” She could hear the faint scrape of cloth as he dragged it over the edge of his knife. All he’d have to do was _twist_ , and - “You took something of mine. So I took something of yours.” 

“I didn’t take shit from you!” She took two steps forward and stopped as he pulled the cloth hard over the edge of the blade. 

“You might not think so. But I do.” He lightened his grip. “Killing you wasn’t enough. Hurting your friends didn’t do much. So I thought I’d get a little more _personal_.” 

“Asshole.” 

“You’ve called me worse. I’d think someone trying to ask a favor wouldn’t be so nasty about it, hm?” 

To her surprise, he lowered his knife. But then he brought the hachimaki up, still partly twisted around his knuckles, and ran it down the side of his mask. It was just barely more manageable to see than if he’d run it across his bare face. 

But only barely. 

Yui charged at him. There wasn’t a huge distance between them; the church was mostly rubble, and the pews that had survived out here had been dragged upright as close to the door as possible without having to cross the marble flooring. It would have given him enough time to slash at the hachimaki, but he chose to dodge out of the way instead. 

At first she thought maybe she’d surprised him, but as she skidded and caught herself on the pew, she heard him laughing again. No, he thought this was going to be _fun_. Another one of his stupid fucking games. 

This time, she had a way to cheat. 

He waved the hachimaki at her as he darted away. His knife was still in his hand, but it wasn’t upraised; he wasn’t going to ruin all his fun by killing her just yet. Yui chased him, snatched at his hand, tried to keep his attention on keeping the hachimaki away from her instead of on stabbing her. On his hand, not hers. 

She managed to catch his sleeve with a hand and dragged on it. Her other hand plunged into her jacket, but as she did so he pulled back _hard_ , throwing her off balance - and sending the screwdriver flying out of her coat to clatter on the marble floor and roll too far away for her to reach. 

They both watched it go. She recovered first, and grabbed his arm with both hands, trying to sprain it or, better, wrench it out of the socket. _That_ was when his knife came up, slicing at her hands, and it was either let go or let him take off a finger. 

“A weapon? Really?” He sounded about as amused as he did annoyed. “You came all the way out here to take one hell of a risk and it didn’t even pay off.” 

“Shut up! What the hell did you expect?” 

“Something a little more intelligent.” Ghost Face kicked the screwdriver away. It vanished in a pile of rubble, leaving her almost as unarmed as she was in a trial. “But I’m impressed anyway. You just walked in, confronted me, tried to kill me - most of your friends wouldn’t even have thought about that.” 

“I don’t fuck around.” She still had her fists. She could still break his face. She just had to get the knife away from him. 

“And it’s going to get you killed. Again.” He examined the end of his knife, flicking off a drop of invisible blood. “You’re going to _hate_ finding out what I’m allowed to do out here.” 

There was nothing to do but fight. To attack him again, hope she had a chance of overpowering him or at least hurting him before he killed her. Yui ran at him, ducked low to avoid the first knife blow and caught him around the waist to carry him back into the debris. The marble floor gave her a lot more traction than either of them had expected, and when his boots hit the exposed floor they both went flying. He didn’t lose his knife when they landed, but he did lose his breath; she heard him choke, and tried to take advantage of it with a punch as soon as she’d pulled herself far enough up on him to hit. 

The first one landed, but he caught the second one. That left her with the chance to catch his other wrist as the knife came at her. She was strong enough to hold him back, but she knew it wouldn’t last forever. Maybe back in the real world she would have had a chance. Here, she was just delaying the inevitable. 

“I’m going to kill you,” she hissed. His laugh was low, short, and sharp. 

“It won’t stick. You’d be better off getting on your knees and begging.” 

“You wouldn’t give it back for that.” 

“No. But I’d like it.” 

She opened her mouth to say something else - snarl some insult, call him some name - when the sound of a horse whinnying cut through the church. A second after it, she heard an explosive cough.

“Oh, good, he’s back,” Ghost Face said, his voice suddenly light and cheerful again. “Looks like it’s about to be two against one. Think you’ve still got a chance?” 

Yui hesitated, glancing over her shoulder. Two against one - she’d be dead without a struggle. And the Clown … 

Underneath her, Ghost Face laughed. She glared back down at him. 

“Want to know what _he_ does to survivors he catches?” he asked, the delight in his voice almost obscene. 

Yui brought her head down and smashed the crown of her skull into where she hoped his forehead was under the mask as hard as she could and ran. Back out the ruined church walls, back through the trees, as fast as she could toward what she hoped was safety. She couldn’t hear anybody behind her, but that was never a promise. 

The fog suddenly faded in ahead of her. Without a word, fighting back the anger and pain and the edge of wild excitement from the first real fight she’d had in ages, Yui ran into the endless gray and let it close around her.  
  


* * *

  
Claudette had beaten her back to the campfire. She wasn’t happy to find out where Yui had gone, or why she’d done it, and having brought a weapon didn’t assuage her any, especially once she learned she hadn’t even been able to use it. 

Yui tried to minimize the whole thing, partly to make the crushing disappointment feel a little less all-consuming. The stinging pain in her forehead and knuckles was at least a little bit of a reprieve. 

“He’s disgusting. Taunting you like that, asking you to _blow_ him … ” Kate shuddered. “What a piece of work.” 

“I don’t know. Maybe I should have done it,” Yui said idly, staring into the campfire. “I’ve fucked guys almost as bad as him. And it would have put me in range to twist his nuts off.” 

Kate laughed. Claudette choked. Dwight went pale and locked his knees together, and David very deliberately turned away from her with a grimace. 

“Not sayin’ it’s a bad idea, but you probably shouldn’t take that risk again. Next time, he might not be in the mood to be nice.” 

“I’m doing it again. I’m going to go after him until I get it back.” 

“Yui, don’t. Kate’s right. You could get really hurt.” 

“We already get hurt,” she said, giving Claudette a dry look. “It doesn’t stick. I’ll get better and try again.” 

Claudette didn’t reply, biting her lip instead, turning away to think - but without letting go of Yui’s arm.  
  


* * *

  
The fight had his blood running. The punch to the face, the little threat of danger from the screwdriver even if she hadn’t used it, the insults, the _anger_ … 

Danny hadn’t felt this good in ages. 

He strolled through the fog, knife in its sheathe, the stolen headband tucked away in his coat again. She wouldn’t come back in a hurry, he knew. The threat Kenneth posed was one none of them wanted to deal with, and the only reason Danny ever bothered to crash there was because it was, in some ways, fascinating to watch him work his his poisons. From a distance. 

Now, with the fight over and having no reason to linger, Danny headed through the fog and came out in the run-down gray warehouse that stank worse than anything he’d ever smelled in his life. 

Since he didn’t have a home territory of his own, there were two places that Danny considered _his_ enough to bunk down in: a room at the ski lodge, which he knew Legion ransacked on a regular basis, and a corner of the meat plant, which he knew Amanda ignored because she couldn’t give two shits about what he did as long as it didn’t get in the way of her own work. That was where he kept anything he considered valuable. Rarer offerings, mostly. And now _this_. 

He made his way through the bloody halls, passing her workshop, where he could see her making minute adjustments to some new trap. He didn’t pause for once; normally he’d ask what she was up to, what sort of nightmare _this_ one would induce, but he wasn’t in the mood to have her offer to demonstrate on him. 

Instead he headed to the little roped-off corner she’d allowed him to set up camp in. There was a tarp along part of the rope, partly for privacy and partly in case she caught someone and there was an unfortunately but inevitable 20-foot bloodspray. He nudged it aside and crouched down in front of the footlocker that held what little he possessed around here. 

Little skulls carved from gleaming wood. Bones tied together by ancient, splitting twine. A spare camera, though the one he had never did seem to break or run out of batteries. A handful of coins. A few different knives, in case he felt like making a whole new impact. And now, in pride of place, the bright pink strip of cloth, stitched and scribbled on with things he couldn’t read. 

He rolled it up carefully and set it in the nest of offerings. Keeping it on him all the time probably wasn’t the best idea. She’d tried pretty hard to get it off him, and he knew that as soon as somebody else picked up on the fact that he had it, they’d come after him to get it. Leaving it here wasn’t the safest plan either - Amanda probably wouldn’t stop Frank from going through his stuff - but he didn’t want to risk someone getting their hands on it in a trial. 

Between trials, he’d hold onto it. She _would_ come back for it again, and he’d hardly be able to taunt her if he didn’t have it. 

Danny settled down on the few blankets he’d managed to scrounge from places and set his back against the freezing concrete wall behind him. With a sigh, he shut his eyes, let himself relax, and thought about the murderous gleam in her eyes as she’d pinned him to the pile of debris without so much as flinching.


	6. Chapter 6

They’d only finished one generator, and she’d already heard too many screams. 

Claudette crouched in the shadow of a sparking generator, her eyes scanning the foggy distance to see if she could see anyone else. Jake was on a hook already, she knew, but Bill was probably going for him, and Nancy - well, if the scream she’d just heard was any indication, Nancy had the killer’s full attention. In some ways that was good, but not enough to make up for the bad. 

And the killer … she pulled at a few gears, slotted a piston back into place, and pushed away from the generator. 

The killer was Ghost Face. 

He scared her. They all scared her, but there was something worse about him. It had taken her a while to pinpoint it, but it occurred to her - and a couple other people, too - that what made him so bad was that he wasn’t like the other killers. He was … _human_ , intelligent and talkative and fully aware of what he was doing and why he was doing it. Some of them, they all knew, were driven to kill because they were insane or at metaphorical gunpoint. Some seemed to think twice about what they were doing, or hesitate, or have mercy. He never did. Even with the coat and the mask, he was so familiar, and so _wrong_ , that it scared her right down to the bone to have to deal with him. 

And now, thanks to Yui, they knew he was just a normal person. Or at least, the normal went skin-deep. It hadn’t made matters much worse, but it hadn’t helped, either. 

What _had_ made matters worse was the fact that now he was focused on Yui, sometimes to his own detriment, and he’d stolen from her. She’d been so upset it hurt Claudette to see. And now she was being reckless, almost fatally reckless, even if that didn’t mean much here. Going to find him outside of trials. Trying to take it back. Fighting with him _in_ trials just to get it. 

A part of her understood, because having something from home was a way to ground yourself, stop from going crazy as things just dragged on. Having it stolen would be agonizing. A larger part of her wanted Yui to just stop worrying about it and forget it, so that maybe Ghost Face would lose interest in her and _leave her alone_. But she knew that wasn’t about to happen. 

She didn’t want to say any of that to Yui. It’d offend her, hurt her, and the thought of that made something clench in Claudette’s chest. But she didn’t want her doing anything so stupid again, either. 

There wasn’t much grass at the saloon, but there were a lot of buildings. She crept around them, listening carefully, peering around corners to see if he was heading her way or anywhere else. There was a trail of blood with limping footprints. Another set of prints split off from those and went another direction. There wasn’t a pursuing set. 

She followed the first set and found Jake wrapping up the hole in his shoulder with his teeth clenched. He glanced at her and shook his head; she moved on, still low to the ground, still trying to find a flicker of graying black in the browns and red-golds of the town. 

Nancy came running around a corner and bolted into the saloon, trailing blood. Seconds later Ghost Face did the same, a little more slowly. She could recognize the way he was moving - a little less sheer intent to kill, a little more like he was stalking his prey. She’d seen it on other killers, but more rarely. Most of them preferred to kill as soon as they could. 

He made his way into the saloon. Claudette steeled herself and followed him. 

Into the main room, with its eerie piano music and dead bodies. Up the stairs, as quietly as she could. Around the corners, onto the balcony around the place, where she knew there were lockers, and she knew there were places to jump off. Nancy was smart - and dangerous, when she wanted to be. 

She watched him stroll past a locker and approach another. 

The door slammed open, hitting him with an incredibly satisfying _bang_ and sending him stumbling back. Nancy lunged off the edge of the balcony and hit the ground running, but Claudette wasn’t paying attention. 

As soon as she’d seen the locker door start to open she’d been moving. Now she was in front of him, snagging the overlapping hood on his jacket, jamming her hand under it to try and find the place where his coat started. Yui had said he’d pulled it from there, so he probably still kept it in the same place, and all she had to do was snag it - 

His hand came up and snapped around her wrist like a vise, squeezing so tight she yelped. 

“Are you stupid?” he asked. Annoyed, irritated - but also surprised, with an edge of a laugh to his voice. “Did you think you could actually get a hand on me and get away in time?” 

“I had to try,” she hissed, and bit back another cry as he ground the bones in her wrist together. “Give it - back to her!” 

“No.” He brought up his knife. She watched it apprehensively. “Did she ask you to take a shot at me? Or is this your way of trying to confess to her?” 

“What? I’m not trying to - ” And infuriatingly, _embarrassingly_ , she felt her face getting hot. 

“I’m _sure_ ,” he said brightly. “Gonna tell me you’re just doing it because you two are really good friends? Not even the dumbest of you would take this kind of risk for _that_.” 

Ghost Face laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. She yanked back and he let her go, making her stumble, and then he slashed at her back as she went. Pain cut through her mind and sent her running, frustration, disappointment, embarrassment and anger trailing behind the sharp hot shock as she went. 

She dropped off the edge of the balcony and staggered into another building, where Bill grabbed her arm and yanked her into a corner. 

“You’re a damn fool,” he grumbled, popping open his medkit, and all she could do was nod in silence. 

But at least she’d _tried_.  


* * *

  
“What? Are you kidding me?” Yui stared at Claudette, mostly in disbelief. “You tried to steal it back from him _in_ a trial?” 

“If it’d keep you from going after him? Sure.” She smiled weakly and leaned forward, her elbows on her thighs. “Plus … if he was mad at _me_ , it might keep him off you.” 

“Look,” Yui said after a few seconds of trying to work everything out, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate it, because I really, really do, but that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard! Don’t try to help me by putting yourself in his path.” 

“Stupider than going after him with a screwdriver?” 

“Absolutely! At least I could use that. He would have hunted you down until he got it back if you _did_ manage to get it away from him.” 

“I had to try.” 

And … that was hard to argue with. Because she really did appreciate the fact that Claudette had actually tried to get it back for her. A few others had tried to argue with him about it to no result, so this made something in her stomach flutter. She didn’t even know Claudette had that kind of courage - or maybe just insanity - in her. 

But putting herself in his path just to save Yui? That wasn’t an option. And now she had the uneasy feeling that he’d turn some of his attention to Claudette because of it. Yui wasn’t going to throw anyone else under the bus for her own sake, or let someone else throw _themselves_ under it just because. Especially not Claudette. 

The bastard … she glared at the fire, at the way the wood under all the flames glowed white at the heart. He hadn’t taken her seriously in that fight. He’d been toying with her. Laughing at her. Letting her attack him to see what she’d do next. If she hadn’t lost the screwdriver, she might have managed to stick him, and then what would he have done? 

Stabbed her, probably. Unless she got it in his throat, or his eye socket, or through his dick. And wouldn’t _that_ have been gratifying, after his nasty little suggestion. 

Though like she’d said to Kate … it would have put her in range of very sensitive parts of him, ones no man should let a pissed-off woman with lacquered nails and an unbroken jaw near. It had probably been a joke, since he didn’t strike her as _that_ stupid, but the thought lingered, at least in some form. After all, it had been a while since she’d gotten laid. At _all_. 

Her gaze drifted around the campfire, to the handful left not in trials. There were relationships, sort of. Friends with benefits. People would disappear one at a time and come back together with some flimsy excuse. And why shouldn’t they? There had to be _some_ reprieve from this nightmare hellscape. 

She hadn’t, yet. Getting up the courage to proposition one of the girls was rougher around here than it had been back home, considering she didn’t _really_ know most of them yet, and her taste in men ran very slim these days. The only time she’d been with a guy and actually enjoyed it had been an early rival in her illegal racing days. She’d beat him in every race. He’d tried to sabotage her bike. They’d fought, him with a crowbar and her with a wrench. The next day they’d had drinks together. After that, she’d let him into her crapshack apartment. 

Then she’d gotten a corporate sponsorship and moved on to bigger, more profitable things, and found that the men didn’t know their ass from their face while all the women genuinely seemed to like her. Back in high school it had been the same, except now there was no stigma against that, or at least not one anyone was going to tell her to her face. He’d moved on to more dangerous streets. She hadn’t heard from him since. 

Yui brushed the thought away, but it drifted back. She might have only ever fucked guys who got her mad, but there was a whole universe of difference between trying to sabotage a race and killing her and her friends on a regular basis, wasn’t there? 

Claudette’s hand landed on her arm again, a soft and comforting presence. She rested her own hand over it, squeezed a little to reassure her that, mad she might have been, it was only because Claudette had put herself in danger. 

“I’ll try to do it better next time,” she said. 

“You won’t do it at all next time. I’ll get it back from him if I have to pay another killer to do it for me.” 

“Don’t even think about that.” But Claudette was smiling. “You don’t have any money.” 

“I could sell out David in every trial.” 

They both laughed. Then Yui sighed and shut her eyes, trying to get a little extra warmth by leaning against Claudette. 

“I’m getting it back. Don’t put yourself in danger for me, okay? It’s not like we don’t have all the time in the world.” 

“Yeah … yeah, I know.” 

It was a little faint, and a little sad. Because they both knew that even if time didn’t really exist here, they were still trapped. It was something that hurt to even joke about. 

A breeze blew through the clearing. She felt Claudette go still, and then, slowly but surely, the feeling of her against Yui faded. The warmth cooled. Her fingers closed around her own leg. She opened her eyes. 

The log next to her was empty. Taken to a trial, even though she’d hardly been back five minutes. She glanced around and saw a few others missing, too, who’d been there a moment ago. She shifted, and tried not to feel so alone. 

She felt cold, even with the warmth of the campfire so close at hand. Cold, and lonely, and lost without the one thing she really valued stolen by a snide piece of shit. His mask flickered in her mind. His voice, every nasty word, bounced around in her skull. Her jaw clenched. Her nails dug into her arms. 

Anger made heat start to overpower the cold. Made her feel awake. Alive. Ready to kill. 

She’d get the damn thing back _herself_ , and spare Claudette having to feel like she should take a risk. 

Without a word, Yui stood up and strode into the darkness outside the campfire. She heard someone call to her, try to ask her where she was going, but she ignored it and kept walking. She wasn’t going to wait around, wasn’t going to risk getting talked out of it. If she was pissed off, she could keep going in this place, and dealing with him was a surefire way to infuriate her. 

She fixed him in her mind and stormed into the fog.  
  


* * *

  
It dropped her in another forest. This time it was more alive, but cold enough that she could see her breath, and suddenly the cropped tank top didn’t seem like such a good idea. 

Finding him here would be harder. There were fewer shadows without any moonlight coming in from above to cast them, but that just meant the entire forest was nothing but solid darkness. Every tree was its own silhouette; the rocks and tangled bushes were dark enough to be black until she walked up close enough to see the little hints of color. 

She’d have to listen, then. There was the looming house in the distance, its logs and boards overgrown and half-returned to the earth, but she wasn’t interested in checking there right away. _That_ killer might have been home, after all, and she got the feeling she wouldn’t have time to explain she was looking for someone else before an axe split her skull open. 

But listening was its own trial. Wind rustled the leaves and bushes and grass, and her own footsteps seemed too loud, too easy to overhear. She kept her ears open anyway, glancing around, trying to see a shape that didn’t fit, a darker silhouette in the semi-darkness, the straps on his coat that always seemed to float for some stupid reason and should have given him away a lot more often than they did. 

All she saw was darkness and patches of pale grass, mist wreathing the trees and hiding the path back to the fog. Sometimes she thought she saw a hint of something white, but it always turned out to be a cut in a tree, a mark left by something hitting it so hard that it left a cut-out chunk in the bark to reveal the pale wood underneath. 

It got on her nerves. She could feel the cold creeping up along her spine like the tip of a knife trailing along her skin. Or - 

“You’ve got balls of steel. You know that?” 

Yui turned, faster than she intended to. 

At first she didn’t see him. Then one of the straps flicked, and the shape resolved itself: his coat, as much gray as it was black, blended into the dark hues of the forest a lot more effectively than if it had been solid black. He moved his arm and she saw the strip of paler leather, and then he lifted his head. 

“Coming after me again after I almost gutted you last time is either the dumbest or most impressive thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, the almost blinding white mask watching her impassively. 

“You didn’t _almost gut_ me. You weren’t even trying.” Her hands clenched into fists and she glared at him, knowing he, at least, could see her expression. 

“Bring a weapon this time?” 

“Why don’t you come over here and find out for yourself?” 

“So I can conveniently be in stabbing range? That was a long screwdriver you had last time.” 

“Think you’re not fast enough to stop me before I put something through your eye? That’s almost flattering.” Yui smirked, but only slightly. “Give it back.” 

“Does the word ‘no’ not mean anything to you?” 

“I’m asking nicely, fuckface. In the hope that some part of you is going to realize how stupid and petty this is and hand it over.” 

“That didn’t _sound_ nice.” He started to move toward her, each step slow and careful. His hands were behind his back now, either to hide the knife or to make himself look like a polite young man coming within killing range. “It’s not stupid or petty if you’re going to this kind of extreme to get it back.” 

“It’s both. You just don’t know how to tell the difference between those and actually being hurtful.” Which was a lie; it wasn’t a petty move, though maybe stupid had some grounding. It _did_ hurt to know he had it, and wouldn’t give it back. 

He stopped just close enough that she could grab him if she lunged, or he could stab her if he 

made the first move. One hand came around and up to slip under the collar of his hood and tug the end of her hachimaki free, the pink standing out against his coat and the grays all around them. She only just barely restrained herself from attacking there and then. 

“Maybe, but I _know_ this hurts you. I can see it in your face.” He idly twisted it around one finger. “And all that anger … you wouldn’t be so pissed off if I hadn’t gotten right through all those little barriers you built to keep people from finding out there’s anything soft about you.” 

“Don’t even _start_ with that shit.” 

Ghost Face laughed, low and quiet and grim, and tucked the hachimaki back into his coat. He brought up both hands to adjust the set of his hood, and she didn’t see the gleam of his knife. 

Yui didn’t give him time to say anything else or keep taunting her. She leaped, hands out, ready to try and get her nails through the leather if she could. He fell back, but when he saw her hands were as empty as his he skidded to a halt and let her slam into him. Trying to play another game, she thought, but this time, she wasn’t going to let him lead. 

She put all her weight into the hit and brought up a knee to try and hit him square in the crotch. She missed - not by much - which made him grab her wrists and try to swing her out of the way. In turn she slammed the heel of her boot down on one of his. 

Underfoot she could feel the heavy weight of steel toecaps, but that let her heel shift enough to bear down the full weight of her strength on the center of his foot instead. She heard him snarl something and yank his leg away. Half his attention was diverted and she ripped an arm free to punch him, not aiming for the plastic of the mask or the half-protected side of his skull, but for his throat, with only the thin soft cloth that kept his mask in place to protect it. 

He jerked back in time to avoid the full hit, but she still landed the punch. The noise he made had her grinning, and then she was almost on top of him, fists going hard, letting instincts learned on the back streets of Nagoya take over. No weapons. No way to get her fingers in his eyes. But leather or not, there were soft places, weak places, and above all _painful_ places she could land a hit. 

It worked up to a point. She could tell he didn’t like trying to defend himself, since that wasn’t _his thing_ , but she was relentless. She wouldn’t let him put any real distance between them. So he did the only thing available to him and kicked at her leg, the heel of _his_ boot only marginally less significant than hers and twice as strong. 

It nailed her. She stumbled and tried to grab him as she went, hands gripping the damp and therefore _slick_ leather of his coat like grim death, but he scythed her on the back of her legs with one of his own, and she went down. 

Which would have been worse if that hadn’t put her at the exact level to punch him in the knee hard enough that she heard a _crack_. 

“ _Fuck!_ ” And then he was trying to drag himself away, but she caught him by the coat and yanked. Ghost Face hit the ground. Yui tackled him. 

From there it turned into a brawl. She didn’t give him time to pull his knife out, and without having to worry about him grabbing something of hers, there was nothing to focus on but gutting him. He wouldn’t let her get the hachimaki back without being unconscious so she knew she had to knock him out. But he was making that difficult, rolling them, punching her, landing more hits than she would have liked. And she didn’t have even the slight protection he did. 

Still - it was _working_. He wasn’t armed, she was hurting him, she _might not lose_ \- and the thought of it, of winning a fight and getting back what was hers, made her blood run hot and all the energy she normally had to spend on a trial burn bright and fierce. How long had it been since she’d had a _real_ fight? Not just running for her life and struggling not to die, but actually throwing down? Too long. Way too fucking long. 

She clawed at his mask, nails scratching the flimsy plastic surface, and he reared back. She followed him, brought up a knee, jammed it against his crotch to try and cripple him and felt a very _distinct_ bulge that made her jerk back. 

He noticed it, and lunged, grabbing her by the arms and slamming her back down on the ground to pin her with her leg still caught between them. She sneered at him and fought, feeling blood running down her chin from a split lip, hoping he was bleeding even worse under the mask. 

“What the fuck?” she snarled. “Are you getting _off_ on this?” 

“Sure,” he said, panting. “Why not? Trying to tell me you aren’t?” 

“Hell no!” She bucked, but he kept all his weight on her; if she could just move her leg a _little_ to the left she knew he wouldn’t be so interested in doing that, but she was effectively pinned. “I don’t get off on fights!” 

“Really? The illegal street racer who had to claw her way into any kind of respect? Who ran a _gang?_ You expect me to believe you don’t like a good fight?” 

“How the hell did you know I - ” She cut herself off. That didn’t matter. “I like a fight, but I don’t _like_ a fight, asshole!” 

“You’re lying.” His fingers tightened around her arms. “I saw it before when you charged me. I can see it now. You’re going hard for this. Gotta get that energy out _some_ how.” 

“You’re seeing my burning desire to _kill you_ ,” she snarled, but he only laughed. 

“Hey, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? Haven’t you ever heard that love and hate are two sides of the same coin?” 

“Never in my life.” 

“No? Think about it. Haven’t I been the only thing you’re thinking about? You’re spending all this time focusing on me, trying to get my attention, hoping you can get your hands on me … ” 

“To beat the shit out of you!” His voice was almost lilting now, though still with its usual sneering edge, and even worse was that he was making sense. _Love_ had nothing to do with it, but that was about where the argument had to stop. Dangerous assholes had their appeal. 

“You can still try it.” She could almost hear the smirk on his face. “Come on. When’s the last time you had a break around here? And you wouldn’t exactly be the first one of your little friends to do it.”

Yui stared at him, partly horrified and partly curious. He _had_ to be lying about the last part, at least. 

“You’re trying to tell me anybody I know goes to do that _willingly?_ Who the hell do you expect me to believe would do that?” 

“Now, now, I can’t give away _all_ my secrets,” he said lightly. “But let’s just say it’s a few, and more often than you’d think. Outside trials, of course.” His head tilted. “Don’t tell me you’ve never considered it.” 

What she wanted to say was no, she’d never considered it. But the truth was that sometimes, when they were exhausted and angry and feeling spiteful, those of them still left around the campfire would discuss who among the killers might be worth fucking. And why wouldn’t they? Talking about each other would just lead to frustration and hurt, but the killers? Who cared? The thoughts and conversations horrified them to the point of hysterical laughter, and really, anything was better than letting the cold depression and despair close in on them and make everything too bleak to handle. 

Ghost Face had occasionally figured into those conversations. He was more human - or at least more human-looking - than some of the others, after all, and he had a swagger that appealed to some of them, though up until now never her. If it hadn’t been for his tendency to be a fucking psychopath, he might have ranked higher in the general consensus. 

She stared up at his mask, the dirty and slightly-cracked plastic completely unreadable, and warred with herself. 

Part of her said: don’t do it. He’s insane. A killer. A _murderer_. He’s killed you and your friends over and over again, laughed about it, made his own game out of it, taken _pictures_ in the process. He stole from you, tortured you, is really, _actually_ enjoying all the chaos he’s causing. He’s completely the opposite of everything you like in anyone, much less a man. 

But another part of her said: do it. He’s got a point - when _did_ you last have a break around here? You’ve done nothing but suffer and die for who only knows how long, with only breaks at the campfire to keep you sane. Plus, you can rip him up if you get your hands on him and he’ll deserve it. What harm is five or ten minutes of totally selfish indulgence going to do? 

And as she was pulling up a counter-argument to her own counter-argument, a third part of her surged up out of the darkness in the back of her brain, where all her instincts lay coiled and ready to strike, and said: do it. Because in the aftermath when he’s blinded and distracted and weak, you can beat him to a pulp and _take back what’s yours._

The whole thing took a few seconds, which he let her have in total silence. Yui ground her teeth together and glared up at him. 

“What happens if I say I’m not interested?” she asked carefully. 

“Then I cut your pretty little throat and we go on with our lives,” he said. “I have easier ways of getting laid than trying to force it out of you, if that’s what you were thinking.” 

“What a gentleman,” she sneered, and then hesitated. Fucking a killer was a terrible idea, one she never thought she’d even consider - but … 

“So?” She could feel tension in his hands, like he was ready to go for it or kill her. She curled her lip at him and brought up a hand as far as she could, snagging the place where his coat opened. 

“Get rid of the knife,” she snarled. 

“Afraid I might use it?” 

“What do you think?” She jerked on the coat, making him slam a hand into the ground to keep his balance. “You just threatened to cut my throat. Throw it or I’ll regret waiting this long to beat you to death.” 

He watched her for a long moment, then let go with one hand to reach down and pull his knife from its sheathe. She watched the blade come up into her line of sight, gleaming with a light coming from somewhere she couldn’t see, and then he tossed it away, off into the grass. Out of his reach - but out of hers, too. 

It was as much an agreement as either of them needed. Impulse took over. His other hand let her go and shoved her offending leg aside, leaving him between both, and snatched at the belt wrapped around his waist. She watched his impatience, but more importantly, she watched to see what was underneath. 

What she saw was - a plain white shirt, rumpled, sweat-stained, torn a little where she’d hit him, which was more than a little satisfying. He pulled it far enough open that she thought for a second she’d see her hachimaki fall into view, that maybe she could snatch it and punch him in the dick and run - but it must have been tucked away into a higher pocket. He undid the belt on his jeans, flicked open the button, and then turned his attention back to her. 

“Can’t do everything myself,” was his wry comment, to which she snorted and fumbled with the fastenings on her own pants. 

“I’m not doing this to make you give my hachimaki back,” she warned him, letting an edge of danger seep into her tone. 

“I wouldn’t give it back even if you were,” he shot back, undoing his pants and bringing a hand up to move her along faster. “Or I would have started out with the offer.” 

“Blackmail? You’re garbage.” 

“Does it matter? You wouldn’t have given in anyway. Only mutually beneficial agreements work for the gang leader.” He knocked her hands away and yanked her jeans down her thighs as far as he could, then hooked a finger in the band of her underwear. “Pink? How _cute_.” 

“Did you miss literally every other piece of clothing I wear that’s pink?” Yui glared at him, and he yanked them the rest of the way down to her pants with a snicker. 

“I was expecting black.” 

His were gray. And, when he finally got both those and his pants down far enough, she propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look. 

She raised her eyebrows. 

“Huh,” she said. “I thought you’d be smaller.” 

“ _Excuse_ me?” Frost glittered on every syllable. 

“Smart-mouthed narcissists like you are usually compensating for something.” She kept her tone light and dismissive. If he could be nasty, then so could she. “Guess that’s not the case every time.” 

“You’re being awfully mouthy for someone who doesn’t want to get stabbed at the end of this,” he said shortly, hand sliding up what of her thigh was bared to dig his thumb into her skin hard enough to hurt. 

“You think you’ll be able to afterward?” She smirked, but it dropped when she felt his hand move closer. “Wait - hold on. If you’re going to do _that_ , take your glove off.” 

“Why? Where do you think it’s been?” 

“I know exactly where it’s been. That’s the problem. Take it off.” 

He shrugged and pulled it off. Underneath was a normal human hand, pale, slightly scarred on the knuckles, dirt or maybe dried blood flecked under his nails but otherwise completely expected. His hand went back to her thigh and traced its way up, sliding between her legs, almost teasing her until she grit her teeth and tensed, ready to get him going if he wasn’t going to start this. _Then_ his fingers moved in, finding her, pressing down. 

It was like an electric shock all the way through her, making her go rigid for a second before grabbing at him. His touch wasn’t expert, or even gentle, but it felt _good_. Better than anything this place had thrown at her since she’d gotten here. 

“Holy shit,” she breathed, fighting to keep her head up. 

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” 

“Don’t. I’ve had - ” She cut herself off as he slid a finger inside her, moved deeper and _curled_ it, feeling a sound she was never going to let anybody hear bubble up in her chest. “ - way better.” 

“Around here? You want to put money on that?” 

“Shut up,” she breathed, fighting the urge to lock her knees against him and hold him in place until she was finished. But not only was that going to be counterproductive, she knew he wouldn’t let her. He was selfish; he wouldn’t give her anything unless he was getting something even more out of it for himself. 

Still, he kept going until she was choking back a whine, and only then did he pull his hand back and wipe off slick fingers on the inside of her thigh. Not for the first time, she was glad she couldn’t see his expression under the mask. She took a moment to catch her breath and watch him cautiously as he moved back just enough to grab her legs under the knees and try to arrange them. 

The angle wasn’t perfect. He pushed her legs forward until her knees were almost at her chest, and she could only get her feet behind him at his lower back if she tried; otherwise her pants caught at his chest. But it had been too long, _way_ too long, since she’d gotten laid, and at this point the hate and anger had built up enough that his impatience in this matter above all others was contagious. 

The hurt when he pushed into her was instantly and completely overpowered by the pleasure. And _fuck_ , if she’d felt an electric shock before this was like being electrocuted, every nerve on fire, every inch of her skin tingling. She made a noise she’d be embarrassed about later. She heard him _laugh_ , the fucking asshole, but it was breathless. 

“Fuck,” she breathed as he started a rhythm too slow for her liking. 

“Knew you’d like it,” he said, in a tone she really didn’t want to call a purr. 

“Yeah, well, it’s been a while,” she dismissed. “It’d be just as good with anybody - ” She cut herself off as he thrust hard just once, enough that she didn’t want to risk another noise. 

“I doubt that. None of your boys around the campfire are what I’d call _popular_ with women, and the less said about my … _colleagues_ , the better.” 

“But you want me to believe somebody’s fucking them anyway?” Yui found the places where his coat hooked into itself and pulled them free, opening his coat totally, giving her access to the rest of his chest. She dug her nails into the skin just above the low-cut collar and dragged down, making him hiss. 

“ _Watch it._ ” She went a little lighter on the scratches, and his tone lifted back to normal. “Some people are. People with different tastes than you. I see them going. Not all who wander are lost out here. _You_ sure weren’t.” 

“I had a reason,” she snapped, but his laugh was dark and dangerous. 

“Yeah. And now you’ve got another one.” 

She would have said something else, but his hand came back down, found her again even with the awkward angle he had to take, and she bit back a gasp instead, tearing his shirt at the collar. It had lights flashing in front of her eyes, her whole body focused on the heat pulsing through her - but it didn’t distract her quite enough to miss his other hand coming back around with something silver. Duller than the knife, and bigger. 

It took her a second to realize it was his fucking _camera_. 

“ _Hell_ no,” she snarled, swiping at it, but he kept it just out of range. “Don’t even think about it.” 

“Already did. Think you can stop me?” 

The sudden threat had her brain firing on all cylinders, and she shifted just slightly, enough that she could dig her heels into his lower back as hard as possible, ideally right over his kidneys, and tightened both her legs and herself around him as much as she could, holding him in place. 

“Do you want to know something really interesting?” she asked breathlessly, and then continued before he could answer. “Kegels are a great form of exercise, and if she does enough of them, a girl can get a really strong pelvic floor. Strong enough to fracture some poor idiot’s dick, even.” 

His mask stayed fixed on her, but the hand with the camera didn’t move. 

“That’s not true,” he said, and winced as she dug her heels in even harder. 

“Do you want to take that risk?” 

In truth, she had no idea if it was possible. One of the girls had brought it up one night while they were drinking in the VIP room of a bar, swearing up and down that it was real, it could happen, she’d read it from a blog online about a girl being so upset about accidentally doing it to her boyfriend! And since they were all drunk they’d laughed for hours about it. It had been one of those things to bring up when guys tried to make a pass at her; after all, if she was rigid with tension in every race, there must have been _some_ strength building up somewhere, not just in her arms. 

And apparently even a psychopathic killer stuck in a nightmarish hellscape that healed all wounds had his dick as a priority, because as she watched, he slowly put the camera back where he got it from. She relaxed with a smirk. 

“Nice to see you aren’t totally single-minded.” 

He snorted in response, which was as good a way of telling her she’d gotten the best of him as anything. It didn’t take him long to pick up the pace again. 

“Just because it’d heal doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt,” he said, finding a grip on her and digging his fingers in hard. The gloved hand bruised; the bared hand dug in, nails too short to draw blood but sharp enough to sting. 

“That’s the point,” she said, trying to sound sweet and poisonous but losing both to a gasp. “To make you - regret being an asshole.” 

“There’s nothing in the world I’ll ever _regret_.” He cut himself off, let out a sharp breath. “I’m not like _you_ shits.” 

It was hard to fight back sounds. Gasps. Whines. She grit her teeth and pulled at him, tried to tear right through the leather, but it was strong stuff and wouldn’t give and even as she yanked at his hood, trying to distract him, she knew she wasn’t going to hold out longer than him. It had been too long. This place had made anything that wasn’t pain too oversensitive. And his grip, hard enough to hurt as it was, only helped things. The rough soon-to-be bruises made the friction of pleasure that much more intense. 

She almost blacked out when she came, legs digging into his sides and heels into his back, ripping his shirt right down to the stomach; when her vision came flickering back she could see a hint of a toned chest, skin pulled tight over muscles and bones. Her thoughts drifted, brain wiped clean of anything but the faint pain and echoes of pleasure as he, still unfinished, kept going. 

Bloodlust uncurled in the back of her mind as she watched him. It wouldn’t take him much longer to finish. He was a man, after all; they never did. The only reason he’d outlasted her was out of sheer desperation on her part. 

She winced when he finally went silent, totally silent, barely even breathing, his hands locked around her shoulder and leg so hard she knew they’d bruise - or at least try to, since they’d vanish as soon as she got back to the campfire. She waited, catching her breath, feeling the tension in him slowly start to drop and then snap like an iron wire cut in half. 

He leaned against her, breathing out in slow, shuddering breaths. Even the straps on the sleeves of his coat had gone limp. 

Yui locked her legs back against him and bucked. He flailed wildly, tried to get hold of something, but she threw herself against him and bore him to the ground with a wince as that drove him deeper into her. He wheezed, winded, and she struck. 

Her first punch was to his throat, to choke him and maybe break his windpipe if she was lucky. The second was to his chest, to make sure he couldn’t breathe. So was the third. And the fourth. The fifth she landed in his face, feeling the mask crack - or maybe that was his cheekbone? - under her knuckles as she poured every ounce of strength she had left into beating him bloody. 

He tried to stop her, but weakened as he was, he couldn’t get hold of her long enough to do it. She knocked his hands away, kept punching, kept hitting him until she felt things start to shatter. Until his already weak struggles stopped and she could hear a bubbling under the mask as he tried to breathe through blood and broken teeth. 

Without even pausing she ripped his hood up and yanked the collar of his coat back. There were a few pockets up near the top, and one of them bulged. Yui all but tore it open and there was her hachimaki, still in one piece, a little wrinkled for how he’d jammed it back in his coat without a thought but otherwise totally unharmed. 

She took it back and leaped up, dragging her pants back on as she went. There was no time to stop and button up. He’d be back on his feet in no time, and if she wasn’t gone, _really_ gone, she knew he’d kill her for this, and she’d lose the hachimaki again. 

So she ran, focusing on getting to the fog, on getting back to safety and letting the soreness fade out of her. The satisfaction of taking back what was hers _and_ getting something pleasurable from someone she normally couldn’t even lay a hand on kept a fire going hot inside her - but as she bolted through the trees and mist and back into the fog, it started draining, slowly ebbing away and letting a cold, ugly feeling of regret take its place.


	7. Chapter 7

The campfire was as bright as ever, flames crackling and letting off the only real heat any of them could find in the fog. It was normally a constant comfort, something to be glad to get back to. 

The warmth wasn’t reaching Yui. Not inside, anyway. The heat, the intensity, the power, the pleasure - everything she’d gotten out of her encounter with Ghost Face had slid away like blood off a knife as she’d made her way back to the campfire, leaving her feeling hollow and cold. 

It was regret. She hated the feeling. She lived in the moment, doing both what seemed like a good idea at the time and her damndest to make sure she did right by good people; there wasn’t time for regret in her life. Here, where there was no time at all, it ate away at her. 

Oh, she’d been all for it, there was no doubt about that. He hadn’t been the worst she’d ever had, and something about the hate burning in her had given it a frisson she didn’t normally get. But while she’d regretted fucking people before, there was a difference between wasting a night with some limp-dicked guy or totally self-centered girl and jumping into bed with someone who’d killed her, stalked her, stolen something she valued, and done both of the former to people she considered friends. He was probably going to make the ex-lovers she had back home look pathetic once he got back on his feet. 

And there was guilt running riot in her, too. He’d probably been lying about other survivors going to fuck killers just to try and bother her, which left her as the only one willing to do it. She’d opted to have sex with a man like _that_ rather than anyone at the campfire. People she liked. Appreciated. Admired. Hell, she hadn’t even _asked_ any of them yet. She couldn’t use being turned down as an excuse to try and justify it. 

She sat on the log with her elbows on her knees, her hachimaki twisted up in her hands. It had seemed like such an appealing idea at the time, and it had gotten this back for her. She tried to tell herself it was worth it. She’d had fun, gotten a few minutes of real, actual _pleasure_ out of it, and gotten to turn his face into a bloody mess, which was almost as good as the sex itself. That _was_ worth it. 

Maybe if she focused on that hard enough, she told herself, she could convince herself it was true. 

For once, almost the entire clearing was deserted. The only other person sitting by the fire was Jake. It was incredibly rare to have that many people stuck in trials at once; the only thing rarer was having nobody gone, which apparently hadn’t happened since there were only seven people trapped here. Normally she would have been frustrated by the lack of anyone to talk to. Right now, she considered it a blessing. 

There was only the sound of distant wind and crackling flames for a long while before Yui spoke. 

“Have you ever done something you regret here?” she asked without looking up. On the other side of the fire, Jake watched her through the flames. 

“A few times.” 

“Just … wondered why you did it? How you could have been so stupid in the first place?” 

He didn’t answer. She wasn’t really expecting him to. Her fingers tightened around the hachimaki. 

“I just can’t … ” She clenched her jaw, then let out a sharp breath and pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. “I hate this place.” 

There was more silence for a while before she saw him shift slightly through the heat rising over the fire. He could probably only see her as clearly as she could see him, but her hachimaki would be front and center from his perspective. 

“You got it back?” 

“Yeah,” she said, bitterly. “By doing something really, really stupid.” 

“What?” 

She lifted her head and glared at him. He stared back impassively. But of all of them, he said the least, didn’t he? Maybe she could trust him. He’d told her how to get out there and find Ghost Face in the first place, after all. 

“Can you keep it to yourself if I tell you?” 

He nodded. She warred with herself for a few seconds before giving up. 

“Fucked him,” she snapped. 

He said nothing. In her mind’s eye she could see him sneering at her, dismissing her, getting ready to tell everybody else just because of how insulted he was. 

“You can keep your judgment to yourself too, by the way,” she added. 

“I’m not judging you.” 

“Yes you are.” 

“I’m not,” he repeated. “I can’t.” 

Yui stared at her hachimaki. Can’t, he said. Not won’t. She looked up, trying to see his expression, but it looked the same as ever: distant, flat, maybe for once a little apologetic. 

_I won’t_ would have implied some kind of sympathy, that he understood she had her reasons, but _I can’t_ implied that if he did, he’d be … what? Wrong? A liar? No - a hypocrite. What had Ghost Face told her? _You wouldn’t exactly be the first one …_

He saw her expression, the surprise and confusion and doubt, and gave her a very faint smile. 

“Sometimes this place just gets to be too much to deal with,” he said by way of explanation, and she couldn’t find any way to respond. 

Not that his subtle admission made her feel much better. So she wasn’t the only one to do it, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d given _Ghost Face_ a chance before anyone else. And when they saw she had it back … how would she explain it? She could claim she’d finally gotten the best of him, crept up on him while he was doing some stupid bullshit and brained him with a wrench, and while they’d probably buy it she’d know it was a lie. 

Living in the moment had always had its downsides, but they’d never been as low as they were right now. 

The sound of footsteps coming in from the darkness cut through her misery. Yui frantically shoved the hachimaki into her jacket and stared at the fire woodenly until figures started dropping back down onto the logs, some complaining, some silent, and above all everyone still in one piece. 

Claudette wasn’t with them. Not with the first group, and not with the second, and that group was distant and dazed and Yui found herself busy helping them get settled down and recovered, because sometimes trials didn’t just go bad, they went _awful_ , reminding them all of the hell this place really was even if they weren’t actually dead. It was a good way to distract herself from her own personal unhappiness, which was basically irrelevant in comparison. 

She was helping Meg with a long, nasty tear in her shirt, holding it out so she could stitch it up because sometimes their clothes didn’t come back looking as good as they had before, when someone else reached in to help straighten out a wrinkle that neither of them could get to. She glanced up and saw, ahead of the others filing back, Claudette. 

All the guilt came flooding back. She tried to smile anyway, but it was weaker than usual. 

“Hey. Trial go okay?” 

“Better than it could have.” She let go of the shirt once the thread was tied off, and turned her attention to Meg. “Yours didn’t?” 

“It should be a lot easier to outthink something that doesn’t have a face,” she said with a grimace. “Thanks for the help, guys.” 

“Anytime.” Yui moved back to her log, and Claudette joined her. The medkit went back with the rest and then Claudette was leaning against her, something that should have been a reassuring comfort making her stomach twist. 

“You doing okay?” 

“I’m … all right.” 

“Only all right?” She could feel eyes on her, curious, completely unaware of the turmoil going on inside. “Still thinking about how to get your hachimaki back?” 

The word _yes_ was on her tongue immediately, but she stopped herself. The guilt, the regret, the anger directed at both herself and his stupid, snide ass … it would burn her up inside if she let it. Of course, the only other option was exactly as unappealing, because she could see it ending several ways that would turn everything good she’d managed to get here into a pile of cold ash. 

Claudette put a hand on hers. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, and it was so simple, so straightforward, that Yui knew she couldn’t live with herself if she did anything but tell the truth. 

“I need to … come with me for a second.” She stood up, heading a little ways into the darkness. Claudette followed in a hurry. The two of them stopped behind a few of the bigger trees, far enough from the clearing that nobody would overhear them but close enough that there was still some light shining between the trunks. 

Yui reached into her jacket and pulled out the hachimaki. Claudette stared at it, then looked up at her, surprised and just happy enough that Yui knew this was going to hurt like hell. 

“How?” Claudette asked, and it would have been _so easy_ to lie, to smooth this all over and pretend she hadn’t done what she had, but Claudette didn’t deserve that. 

“I went after him again,” she started, trying to pick her words carefully, but being too blunt had always been one of her most readily criticized flaws. “Found him, got in a fight with him, and I … ” 

“You … won the fight?” 

“Not really.” She stared at the pink cloth in her hand, wanting to look anywhere but Claudette. “I almost … he was … ” 

There was no way to word it gently. Yui shook her head. 

“I fucked him,” she said, and kept talking before Claudette could interrupt and before she could go back on her own decision to tell the truth. “We were already brawling so it wasn’t much of a jump. I was sick and tired of being miserable, and he offered, and when it was over I beat him into a pulp and took it back.” 

The silence in the wake of that was so empty the sounds from around the campfire rushed in to fill it. She stared at the hachimaki, hoping this wasn’t going to destroy what she and Claudette had, knowing she had no choice but to accept it if it did. 

“You did that?” Claudette asked. It was a little distant, a little uncertain, and, yes, a little _hurt_ , and that was only going to get worse. “He didn’t threaten you, did he? Or force - ” 

“No. He didn’t.” 

“All right,” Claudette said after too long, and nodded, and Yui finally looked up at her. “I … don’t know if it was a good idea, but at least you got that back, right?” 

She was trying to smile, but it was weak. It was better than the accusations, the arguments, the condemnation Yui had half-expected, but that wasn’t the way Claudette dealt with things, she reminded herself. And that uncertain smile meant that her admission had cut deep. Maybe not down to the bone, but enough that healing was going to be a long, difficult road. 

“It wasn’t a good idea. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done here.” Not that admitting it was going to help matters much, but it would be something. At least Claudette would know she hated herself for it. “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t - ” 

“I mean it,” she interrupted. “Because I didn’t think when I was doing it. I wanted to pretend this place wasn’t a total shithole for a while, and that seemed like a good way to do it. I forgot I already _have_ that whenever I’m around you.” 

The words tumbled out without her expecting them to. She watched Claudette apprehensively, ready to accept she was going way too fast, or just assuming things that weren’t there. 

In the darkness, she saw Claudette stare at her, open her mouth to say something and then shut it again. It was hard to read her expression, but Yui felt a little bit of hope spark in her when she didn’t see anything like disdain or any harder hurt. 

She reached out and grabbed Claudette’s hand, shoving the hachimaki into her palm and curling her fingers around it. 

“I want you to hold onto this,” she said, trying to rush it before Claudette could turn away. “He’ll try to get it off me again, but he can’t if you’ve got it. You’re the only one I trust to keep it safe. Okay?” 

Mutely, Claudette nodded, and when Yui let go she closed her other hand around it. 

“Yeah. I’ll … I’ll keep it,” she said, her voice still distant. 

Before Yui could say anything else, the world started to go gray around her. She looked around wildly, but it was too late to grab anything from the campfire. The fog closed off the rest of the forest and Claudette with it, pulling her away to a trial. 

It was a little while before Claudette made her way back to the light around the campfire, sitting down in her spot and looking down at the hachimaki in her cupped hands. Meg looked over at her questioningly. 

“Where’s Yui?” Then she leaned in a little closer. “You okay?” 

“She got called. I’m … fine.” 

“Are you sure? You look dazed.” 

“Oh, well, it’s … it wasn’t the best trial, and I was hoping to talk to … you know. Nothing. Just this place.” 

Meg squinted at her. 

“Are you _blushing?_ ” 

“What? No! No. I’m just a little … it’s a little hot here. That’s all.” She locked her fingers together and stared rigidly into the fire. 

“Hot?” Meg glanced around at everyone else, huddled together as close to the fire as they could get without being burned. “Since _when?_ ”  
  


* * *

  
The Entity had a strange sense of humor, or irony, or grasp of statistics, or whatever the word for it was. It probably wasn’t thinking or choosing, just picking at random, but _something_ had it out for her. 

Whatever the reason, she was shit out of luck, because when she glanced out the broken window in the upper level of the chapel she saw the now much too familiar swirl of black and gray and bone white that told her the killer this time around was Ghost Face. _Again._

She recoiled from the window and turned to the nearby generator. Of course it would be him. Of course this place wouldn’t give either of them time to distance themselves from what they’d done. No, he was going to find her, she was absolutely certain of it, and he was going to get violent about it. The only good thing she could think about was that she definitely _didn’t_ have her hachimaki on her, which meant he couldn’t take it back. 

Of course, if Claudette was mad or hurt enough, she might have decided to drop it in the woods, or throw it in the campfire. And while the thought stung hard enough to make her stomach hurt, it didn’t seem very likely. Claudette wasn’t vengeful or violent. If she was that upset, she’d probably just give it back. 

At least, that’s what Yui hoped. 

As she worked, David crept up to where he was and joined her, giving her a glance before he set to work. 

“You see who it is?” he asked. 

“Yeah.” She pulled hard at a piece of the generator, almost snapping it out of the mechanical guts. 

“You want me to try and bust his skull?” 

“Wouldn’t work. I appreciate the offer, though.” To say she and David didn’t get along was an understatement, based mostly on the fact that she assumed he was a violent criminal primarily by choice while she’d only broken the law to survive and on voicing this discovered he thought the opposite, but there was a loyalty and honesty to him she could appreciate. And there was something reassuring about the way he charged at _anything_ like a bull at the gate. He made for a good distraction. 

“Just say the word. I’ll knock him on his ass.” She smiled thinly. If only that was really an option. 

But maybe there was another way … 

“You think you can keep him distracted for a while once we’re done here?” 

“Can give it a shot.” He frowned at something in the generator’s innards. “But a bloody nut like that might ignore me if he sees you.” 

“I’ll try to stay out of sight. Keep him running, and if gets you down before we’re out, I’ll come find you.” 

“Gonna hold you to that, you know.” He flashed her a grin and punched something back into place on the generator. 

It didn’t take them long to finish it, but in that time she heard screaming. The two of them crept away, Yui keeping to the upper level, David sauntering back down to the collapsing main level. And then she heard him yell an insult, call Ghost Face after him, and run for the exits; she glanced down just in time to see the black coat stride across the marble flooring and disappear. 

She shivered involuntarily, and made her way down to the main level. 

David played his part better than she expected as she crept through the long grasses and got Cheryl off a hook. She heard him taunting, dodging, keeping Ghost Face’s attention, and for a second she regretted being nasty to him before remembering he deserved most of what he got. 

Another generator went off as she patched up Cheryl and they went their separate ways. There was only silence now - either David was down, or he’d lost Ghost Face … or Ghost Face had figured out he was being led, and had abandoned the chase. 

She crouched behind a broken wall and listened. He could hide his presence; there was no heartbeat, no frantic terror - not until it was too late. But if she listened carefully, she might be able to hear him moving through the grass if he was close enough. And if she heard a scream, then at least he wasn’t close to her - 

There _was_ a scream, and it was too close by for comfort. She heard frantic running and Ace bolted by, close enough that his blood splattered the wall she was hiding behind. Yui held her breath as she felt the pulsing in her skull that told her a killer was nearby, and didn’t, _did not_ look up as she heard Ghost Face stalk by. 

But he didn’t stop. He didn’t see her, and as soon as she heard his footsteps fading out she made a break for the opposite side of the grounds. She had to find a generator. Get it done. Get them out of here. Out of the corner of her eye she saw David making his way through the trees, trying to find either her or Ghost Face or maybe a generator of his own, and she hoped like hell he wasn’t going to make his plan too obvious. Then again, with him, it might just come off as being arrogant. For the first time ever, that was a blessing. 

There was a sparking, choking generator just on the other side of a hill. Yui settled down next to it and started working again. In the distance she heard Ace hit a hook, and hoped either Cheryl or David would go for him; part of it was genuine hope they’d save him, and part of it was selfishness in that doing so would get Ghost Face’s attention off of her and onto them. A cruel thing to do, but at this point, she had to hope they understood. 

But they didn’t know what she’d done. All they knew was that she was still trying to get her hachimaki back - and that as long as he had it, he wouldn’t target her any more than the others. If he started that again, what would they do? What would they ask? Telling Claudette the truth had hurt enough; telling the _rest_ would be - 

A hand grabbed her collar and ripped her backward off the generator. She shrieked and hit the ground on her back, hard enough to wind her for a second, and a second was all Ghost Face needed to put a foot on either side of her and _loom_. His mask watched her intently, its expression hiding the real one. Was it anger? A smirk? Was he impressed or just pissed off? 

“Hey, hot stuff,” he said, and he almost sounded friendly. “How’re you feeling?” 

“Worse for you being here,” she snarled. He crouched down over her, his knife clean but his gloves stained. 

“Now, that’s not fair. After that nice night we had? I thought you’d be _excited_ to see me again so soon.” 

“Don’t flatter yourself. I never should have done it, and you know it.” She sneered up at him. “You weren't so happy about it either. At least not by the end.” 

“Not by the end, no,” he echoed, tapping his knife against his free hand. “You were a decent lay, even with all the little insults and the threats, but since I’m not a hardcore masochist I didn’t _really_ enjoy having my jaw broken in several places.” 

“Just a broken jaw? I should have hit you harder.” 

“Among other things.” There was a flatness to his tone that made her want to grin, but his knife was a clear and present threat. 

“Consider yourself lucky,” she said. “You want to know what my _last_ stalker got?” 

“A two-hundred yard restraining order?” 

“A broken nose, five broken ribs, a fractured pelvis, and five years in prison.” 

“That’s a little harsh for stalking, isn’t it?” 

“Stalking, breaking and entering, and assault with a deadly weapon.” She tried to squirm out from under him, but he didn’t move. “You’ve got two out of three of those. Wonder if they’d be enough for a warrant on that camera of yours.” 

Another generator went off in the distance. He looked away briefly, then back at her. 

“I’m sure it would,” he said dismissively. “I’d love to stick around, but I’ve got some other priorities right now, so let’s pick this back up another time, shall we?” He reached down to her jacket and dug in her pocket. 

He checked her other pocket. Then her pants. Then, more frantically, the inside of her jacket, and then grabbed the front of her shirt and jerked it up. Embarrassment made her face hot, but she just smirked at him. 

“I wouldn’t keep it in my bra even if I had it on me, idiot.” He yanked her shirt back down and looked at her face sharply. “How dumb do you think I am? You think after all that I’d keep it on me?” 

“Where is it?” And his voice was a flat, deadly hiss, the kind that made her gut clench and her blood run cold to hear, but there was no room for fear now. 

“Back at the campfire,” she lied easily. “Where you can’t get it. Where you can _never_ get it. I’ll take the loss of a bandage if it means making your life miserable any day of the week.” 

He was silent - completely, totally silent. She saw his knife tremble for a split second, and the straps that floated off his arms suddenly flickered. But before he could do anything a beam of light flared above her, directly in his face, and he recoiled hard. 

“Fuck off!” snarled David, rushing in to grab her by the arm and yank her out from under Ghost Face in one move. “Come on, get up! Let’s go!” 

Yui scrambled to her feet and followed him, only glancing back once to see Ghost Face standing and coming after them. Now he was mad, _really_ mad, which was never good for any of them, but somehow, all the fear was suppressed by wild, incredible relief. 

“We have to hurry,” she said as they cut back into the chapel and made for the opposite window out. “Trust me when I say I pissed him off, and you made it worse.” 

“Great!” David pulled her around a corner, and they both hid in total stillness for a few long seconds to wait out the pulsing heartbeat. “Serves the fucker right. Let’s go. See if we can’t get this done before he finds you again.”  
  


* * *

  
In the end David wound up dead on a hook and she and Ace had to carry Cheryl out between them, but back by the campfire the mood was at least a little closer to positive again. 

Yui made her way over to the log she shared with Claudette and hesitated a second before sitting down. The chaos in the trial had made her forget what she’d done before leaving, but now it was all there again, right in her face. She had to deal with this. Had to accept that her decisions were going to have consequences. 

Claudette looked up from grinding up plants into a paste and smiled, which was hopeful. It was still a little weak, but it was almost genuine. 

“How was it?” 

“Could have been better. Could have been a lot worse. It was him again. He got David.” 

Claudette glanced over at David, who was arguing with Ace about getting between him and a knife blow, or rather _not_ doing it when he should have. 

“But not you?” 

“No. He was … not happy that I didn’t have my hachimaki with me.” She grinned, hoping it was still somewhere close at hand, and felt relief flood through her when Claudette pulled the end out of her own pocket. “Thanks for holding on to it. Keep it until this is over with.” 

“I will. As long as it keeps it away from him, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

There was silence for a time. She watched Claudette work, picking the leaves off their stems and grinding them up with a makeshift mortar and pestle they’d cobbled together out of rocks from the firepit. Words fought and tumbled in her head for a while, and she tried to pick the right ones. If things were going okay, she didn’t want to ruin them - but she had to know. 

“Are you … mad? About what I did.” 

Claudette stilled, staying silent, and kept her eyes fixed on the mortar in her hands. 

“I don’t know about mad,” she said eventually. “I can’t say it doesn’t hurt. Since I thought … but, well, you didn’t get hurt doing it, and you got back what was yours, and … I know how bad this place can get, too.” She smiled wanly. “Probably more than you do. Taking a chance at something like that to pretend it isn’t so bad … I don’t blame you for that.” 

It was more than she could have hoped for, and it made the tension flood out of her, but there was still the sting of guilt that she doubted she’d ever get rid of it. She’d never planned on hurting anyone but the killers here. And maybe David, on occasion. 

“I guess it was just your choice in _who_ that hurts.” The smile flickered, and Yui sighed. 

“Trust me, I know. I still can’t believe I went for it. Out of all the killers, _him?_ ” His stupid mask, his _knife_ \- they should have been walls even a mountain climber couldn’t scale. Even the vague memory of what he’d looked like hadn’t factored into it, because being good looking and being a good person weren’t mutually inclusive concepts. “I’d say it was the heat of the moment, but at that moment I was trying to kill him.” 

“Well … hate can be attractive sometimes,” Claudette said, making Yui’s blood freeze, but she shrugged and went on. “I had two people in my freshman year history course who did nothing but argue politics and race relations and the last I heard, they were engaged.” 

“That’s a world away from a murderer.” 

“It’s kind of the same concept.” Her fingers twisted the pestle back and forth. “People claim they’re in love with serial killers in prison all the time, after all. Heat of the moment’s probably what it was.” There was a pause. “But, um … did you mean that, before? When you said I made you feel like … ” She trailed off, and Yui picked it up without hesitation. 

“Like this place isn’t a shithole? Yes. I can pretend I’m back in the real world when it’s the two of us here.” She reached out and closed her hand over Claudette’s. “I swear I’ll never lie to you, especially about something like that.” 

Claudette looked over at her, smiling, for once, a real, full smile, and let go of the pestle to wrap her hand around Yui’s and squeeze tight.


	8. Chapter 8

It turned out that Yui was a lot smarter than Danny had given her credit for. 

She’d always struck him as the type to gloat. To lord it over the loser just how much better she was, how badly they’d fucked up, how they had no chance in hell to beat her … and maybe she had been, back when she’d had a life. 

After their little _tête-à-tête_ in the trial he’d expected her to come find him again and make it clear who’d won. That all his effort, all his sacrifices, were for nothing. Maybe, he’d hoped, bring _it_ back just to show off - if he played his cards right and pretended he really _had_ been bested. Not that it would have taken much pretending, he thought bitterly. 

She was impulsive, reckless, and arrogant. All the things someone needed to think they had the right to flaunt a victory in the face of a loser, no matter how relentless or deranged that loser might be. He’d settled down after every trial in whatever place the Entity chose to dump him and waited. 

He hadn’t seen her since. 

Trial after trial, endless, timeless night after endless, timeless night … it seemed impossible that she’d realized coming back to gloat was a stupid move, but evidently she _had_. It was impressive, and almost admirable, and incredibly, unbearably frustrating. He wanted her to come back so he could show her just how stupid she was, how all her little insults added up to just enough pebbles down the mountain to cause an avalanche. He came up with a hundred different ways to do it, each one a little more gruesome than the last, and the nice thing about being in the Entity’s shithole was that he knew he could do _every single one of them_ eventually. 

But that was only if he caught her outside a trial, or made the proper sacrifice _before_ a trial, and … she wasn’t showing up. 

She’d learned. 

She wasn’t in any trials with him. Maybe the Entity had gotten bored of watching their little soap opera and left her to the other killers for a while. And that was frustrating too. He’d never dealt with frustration well. 

How did serial killers get caught? They fucked up. The small handful that had managed to stay hidden for decades had either been careful planners like him or totally deranged lunatics that just couldn’t be read or tracked; all the rest left clues and evidence … or they let somebody get away. 

Nobody had ever gotten away from him. And even here, technically, she hadn’t _gotten away_ , just … wasn’t being killed at any given moment. But she was still alive, and she’d - he grudgingly had to admit - gotten the best of him. He was down one souvenir and she was probably laughing it up with the others at the campfire, lying and telling them how she’d _only_ beaten him up to get it back. 

Normally when he was frustrated, he killed - not always a great idea, but as long as he controlled himself right up until the moment of he knew he never would have been caught even if he _hadn’t_ ended up here. Killing her would have scratched that perpetual itch, but … 

From a high perch on the balcony of the farmhouse, Danny surveyed the trial grounds. He’d done a quick run. He’d seen them all, and she wasn’t among them. Every nerve in his body twanged with tension, ready to snap. 

He couldn’t quite break the association between _not coming to gloat_ and _getting away_. He knew, logically, that they were totally different concepts, but things had never worked the same in his brain as they did in other people’s. It made sense to some part of him: he wanted to kill her, he’d tried to kill her, she wasn’t here, she wasn’t dead. _She got away._

Mirror fragments cracked and glinted in his mind. 

If she wasn’t going to come to him on her own, then he’d have to _make_ her do it. 

And he knew just how to get that particular ball rolling. 

The Entity’s intervention had given them a slow start, but now they were working hard, feeling confident in the fact that none of them had died yet. Danny took that confidence from them one knife blow at a time, stalking them, cornering them, dealing hits that left them reeling and bleeding or flat on the ground, struggling to get away. He knew, as he put one of them on a hook and ignored her frantic screaming, he wasn’t going to get them all - but that was fine. As long as at least one went to the Entity, it would probably give him a pass. 

Nea, forever trying to play the game in ways that didn’t work, went down for a third time. He considered coming back around to her later, but someone else had caught his eye, so he hefted her up onto his shoulder and brought her to a hook, ignoring her insults the whole way. 

“You don’t scare her and you don’t scare us, you fucking freak!” she snarled, elbows hitting him in the back. “Let go! I’ll make you regret - ” 

A noise that could only be described as _splutch_ cut her off, and so did her scream, which was in turn cut short by a sudden, almost merciful death, though if what he’d picked up in his time here was true it was a very short-term sort of mercy. Danny turned and looked out across the cornfield, trying to find his next target. Anyone would be fine, but he was hoping for … 

Ah, and there he was. 

Like a shark in dark waters, Danny crept through the corn and grass and watched the only actual authority figure among the survivors from between the dry, rustling stalks. His whole world narrowed down to the man in front of him, fixed on the bulletproof vest with the bright white writing on the back. _Police_. 

Tapp _knew_ when he was in trouble, jerking up as soon as what little protection any of them had was ripped apart by Danny’s intensity, but he didn’t have time to get far before the knife found him and took him down. 

He crawled a few feet away as Danny idly cleaned his knife and followed him. Now, provided nobody else had a fucking flashlight, he had all the time in the world to peruse his options and the luxury in which to decide what order to perform them in. 

One kick got the man on his back, and he met the pained glare with a grin of his own, even if it went completely unseen. Danny knelt down over him, a knee on either side of his chest. 

“Detective Tapp,” he said, the usual friendliness dampened by the bloodlust surging through him. “I’ve heard so much about you. Nothing positive, really, but that’s pretty normal for cops, isn’t it?” 

Tapp said nothing. Danny tugged at the zipper of the bulletproof vest which, despite its name, would probably do a pretty good job of holding off his knife up to a point. 

“So good at your job, except for the parts where you fucked up.” He unzipped the vest and pushed it open, leaving nothing between the man and a bleeding stab wound except a thin shirt. “But nobody’s perfect, huh?” 

“Shut up.” 

“Don’t be rude.” He let the anger from the insult pool in his gut with the rest of the fury. “It’s a bad idea when you’re on your back with a killer on top of you, after all.” 

“I said shut up,” Tapp repeated. “I’m not interested in anything some insane murderer has to say.” 

“I’m not insane,” Danny said mildly. “I would have been _caught_ if I was insane. And that never happened. Never will, either.” 

He leaned back a little. Thoughts lined up in his mind, metaphorical bullets in the metaphorical chamber; he turned his knife so the flat of the blade caught the light of the harvest moon overhead. 

“I hate to do this, but I have to ask a favor of you, detective.” Tapp’s face creased in a brief frown, quickly wiped away. “See … I need to send a message, and since I can’t just waltz over to the campfire with the rest of you, someone’s going to have to take it for me.” 

Somewhere else, he heard a generator go off. The sound barely registered as it went through his head. 

“It’s nothing complicated. Just a couple of words. Think you can do that for me? I’m sure you can.” 

He slashed down with his knife. It was a surprisingly careful blow, only cutting open Tapp’s shirt and baring his chest, and he felt the man jerk underneath him, clearly expecting something much worse. 

Danny pulled his knife back so Tapp could see it very, very clearly, and took hold of his chin with his free hand. There was a flicker of uncertainty in the man’s eyes as he watched the blade. 

The tension reached a peak. Blood roared in his ears. 

“Tell Yui I’m waiting for her,” he said, in a voice like death walking, and brought the knife down as hard as he could into Tapp’s left eye.  
  


* * *

  
Something had gone wrong. Yui could sense it the second the others came back. 

Feng was helping Nea, who tried to wave her off and nearly landed on her ass in the fire, but it was the return of Laurie and Tapp that put her ill at ease. Tapp sat down in his usual spot without looking up from the ground, and Laurie … looked at Yui, uncertain but without trying to hide it. 

“What happened?” she asked, knowing the answers would come out sooner or later and wanting to get them dealt with now. 

“Your stalker,” said Nea, words half-slurred as she tried to pull herself back together in a hurry. “Him again. Not a happy boy.” 

“Shit.” She glared at the fire and wished Claudette was there. “Now what’s he up to?” 

“He had a message,” said Tapp, in a dull voice that made everyone pause. 

Yui stared at him. Premonitions about what was going to happen next started drifting up in her mind like the fog between the trees, and she felt herself get even colder than she already was. 

“What kind of message?” she asked, not certain she actually wanted the answer. 

Tapp was silent for a while. Laurie glanced between them. 

“I’m not sure you should know,” she said. 

“I’m a grown woman. I can handle it.” 

“I mean I don’t think we should tell you,” she corrected. “If it means he’ll keep doing what he did because he got what he wanted, why should we?” 

“What does that mean?” Yui stared at Laurie, at the way her uncertainty suddenly had a subtle edge to it. “What the hell did he do?” 

“First he took out my eye,” said Tapp, still in the same dull voice. “Then he cut up my hands when I tried to stop him. Right through the middle.” She saw his hands flex, fingers curling in against palms that were now completely healed. “Then he cut me open up the middle.” 

Yui listened, her whole world narrowed down to a flat line of horror, as Tapp described in cold, short words about what Ghost Face had done to him. It hadn’t just been a kill. It hadn’t just been brutality borne out of a bottomless, supernatural rage. It had been deliberate, intent torture. 

“Didn’t know he was almost as bad as Jigsaw,” he continued, apparently not noticing the deathly silence all around him. “And right before he started it, he said to me: tell her I’m waiting for her.” 

He turned his head to stare at Yui. 

She tried to say something. All her words failed her. She opened and shut her mouth uselessly. She hadn’t seen him for trials and trials, and nobody else had said anything was ever out of place. She’d thought things were finally cooling down, that he’d finally _gotten over it_. Evidently she’d been dead wrong. 

Even worse was what she saw in his stare. Not just horror, not just anger: _accusation_. This was _her_ fault. 

“I … ” What could she say? 

“I don’t know what he wants, but you’d better find him,” Tapp said. “And stop this from ever happening to anyone else.” 

“What, so it can happen to her instead?” David shook off the horror and glared at Tapp. “Sorry you got the worst of it, but like hell she should just walk right into him for you.” 

“What if he does that to someone else?” Jane shot back. “Maybe if she finds him he’ll stop.” 

“And maybe he’ll keep it up if he knows we’ll pass on any messages if he’s violent enough.” Laurie hadn’t looked away from Yui yet. “I think you should pretend you didn’t get it.” 

“It’s a little too late for _that_.” She didn’t like the looks she was seeing around the campfire. Some angry, some disturbed, and some … _unpleasant_ , in the same way she’d seen in unfriendly bars that supported rival racers in the past. Like she was a problem. Like she was a _threat_. 

“We can’t take the risk of him getting even worse!” Cheryl chimed in, her hands caught between her knees against the chill. “People can do horrible things for what they think are good reasons. They can get even worse if it’s for bad ones.” 

“It’s a fool’s errand either way,” Bill snapped, flicking ash off the end of his cigarette and glancing at Yui. “You made a bad choice in going after him in the first place, kid. And now look where we are.” 

“This isn’t my fault!” 

“Something started it.” He gave the darkness outside the campfire a cool look. “Don’t remember hearing it was him.” 

Yui listened, staring around at the people left, as they argued about what to do next without addressing her. Under it all the accusation that she was responsible lingered, dark and poisonous, like a bubble of chlorine gas just under a heavy layer of dirt. 

You started this. You did this. You made him do this. _This is what you made me do._

Fights had started around the campfire before. Trials didn’t always go well. Sometimes people were selfish or too afraid and left someone else to die. Or they stole something useful. Or they used each other as bait without arranging it beforehand. Bad blood ran hot and fast and, eventually, trickled out, but the moments were never good. 

But this was different. This wasn’t just a trial gone wrong, this was something that might _stay_. If Ghost Face was really so dedicated to finding her again that he’d kill someone just to send a message, then why wouldn’t he do it again? Some part of her didn’t think he took to being ignored well. Hell, this was _proof_. 

She hadn’t gone after him again because she didn’t want to lose anything else. She figured she could lord it over him at the next trial, but then there hadn’t been any with him, and finally she’d just let it lie. Running around in the fog was too dangerous, and with Claudette around to keep her company, she didn’t feel the need to go looking for anyone else. 

And the worst thing about all this, if there was a worst thing, was that both sides had a point. If she went to find him, he’d know the message got passed on, and he’d do it again whenever he felt like it. But if she didn’t, then he might decide to try again, this time even worse. That was the crux of the argument going on around her: that everybody was wrong and everybody was right. 

Fresh guilt, like a knife made of ice in her gut, crept through her as she listened. Still nobody asked her opinion, or what she thought she should do. 

Yui ground her teeth together. Then she stood up. 

“Shut up!” she snapped, and they all looked at her, arguments halted. “I’m going to find him and stop this. I didn’t think he was going to get so fixated that he’d go after anyone _but_ me over this, so I’m going to be the one that makes sure it doesn’t happen again.” 

“He’ll kill you,” Nea pointed out. “You know that, right?” 

“Maybe.” She glowered at the fire. “And maybe I’ll kill him. They aren’t protected outside the trials.” 

“You might make it worse,” Dwight said, and Yui turned her glower on him. 

“Yeah. I might. And I’ll take care of it if I do.” 

With that she turned and stormed off into the darkness, ignoring anything anyone else might have said. She didn’t hear anyone call her back, but it was hard to hear anyway, with her heartbeat pounding in her ears. 

Anger, guilt, embarrassment, fear … they made her want to kick something, punch someone, get on her bike and ride for hours until everything faded away and left her mind clear and zen and ready to find a solution. But she didn’t have her bike here, or even a road to take it on, and punching someone at the campfire wasn’t going to help at all, and while she could kick the trees they wouldn’t do anything but hurt her by right of refusing to go flying. 

There was no way to get everything out. She couldn’t unleash the fire, let _anything_ go. The only thing she could do was what she’d said she was going to do: find Ghost Face. 

What did he want? She could make a guess. Her hachimaki was up there. So was her life, even as temporary as that would be. And while that might keep him cool for a while, how long would it last? She wasn’t going to go find him and let him kill her every time he got antsy. Not only was the idea offensive and horrifying on almost every level, she wasn’t interested in putting up with it. Nobody else would do it. And nobody else could demand that she do it. 

Tapp was certain what had happened had been her fault. She’d seen it in his gaze, flat and dead and fixed right on her face. Bill was, too, even if she could wave that off as him being old and ornery and bitter. And she’d heard uncertain lines of logic from some of the others, things that would _eventually_ lead them down the path to accusing her of causing this. Turning on her. Singling her out. Making it her responsibility. 

Which it was. 

All this over his stupid mask. 

Her face hot, her blood boiling, her gut clenched tight and her nails cutting into her palms, Yui marched into the darkness and let the fog engulf her.   


* * *

  
This time, she wound up in the murky, overcrowded wrecking yard. She almost tripped over a loose muffler lying in her path, just managing to catch herself on a stack of crushed cars before she hit the mud. 

The place stank. It always had in trials, and apparently that was the case here, too. Like gasoline and motor oil, smells she normally wouldn’t have minded, but there was an undercurrent of rot there, too - like something had died in the piles of metal or under the few cars left standing and been left to molder until the flesh finally melted away. It was everywhere, as much a part of the air as the stink of gas, and eventually her nose shut down just to avoid having to deal with it. 

Yui looked around, trying to find a flicker of gray in the greenish murk, but there were too many shadows here, cast by flaming oil barrels and floodlights and the neon sign of the gas station not too far away. 

“Ghost Face!” she yelled. “I’m here, you fucking freak! I got your fucking _message!_ ” 

The sound of flames and distant wind was the only response. Well, he wasn’t exactly the sort to come running, was he? She’d practically tripped over him in the forest the last time. She’d have to go find him herself. 

That was probably his intention. 

She stalked through the ruined maze of cars and metal and tires, yelling for him, trying to draw him out of hiding. Threats. Insults. Whatever came to mind, she said it, hoping he’d get mad enough to show himself, but the world around her remained resolutely ghostless. 

Maybe he was hiding in the gas station, she thought, or in that tall house in the distance. The gas station seemed more likely. She made her way over to it and stepped inside without bothering to hide the sound of her boots on the concrete floor, feeling something she hoped was grit grind underfoot. 

“What, are you shy or something? Did I hurt your feelings?” She picked her way around the abandoned magazine racks, looked in the back where the garage held its single solitary car, and didn’t see him. 

Had she gone to the wrong place? Maybe her anger had led her down a different path. Maybe the Entity wasn’t going to let her find him. Jake had said using the fog like this didn’t always work; maybe she’d just gotten lucky the last two times. 

It made her stomach hurt. Here he’d actually done something really, really awful, and she couldn’t even confront him about it? No. That couldn’t be right. There was no way she’d be unlucky _now_. 

She rushed back out into the yard, half-expecting to run right into him or see him sitting on one of the cars, watching her with his knife out. He wasn’t. The place was as abandoned as ever, cold and silent and eerie. 

Strange, then, that she got the feeling she was being watched. It was one hell of a giveaway. Yui stalked through the cars again, glancing around. There were crows here - which was unusual, she realized. She hadn’t seen them anywhere else outside a trial, but here they were, perched on the metal, watching her in their own strange silence. 

She waved a hand at the nearest one to try and shoo it away. Normally, that would have sent it flying and cawing, drawing attention to her for any nearby killers to take advantage of; now it just hopped away and kept staring at her, beady black eyes glinting. 

“God damn it,” she snarled, and then, louder, “Where the hell are you?” 

“He’s not here,” said a voice behind her. 

Yui whipped around and saw nothing. Then nothing shifted, resolved itself into a nothing that wasn’t quite as nothing as everything around it. There was a ringing - heavy and hollow and frighteningly familiar, making her heart skip a beat to hear it - and then the nothing started to solidify. 

Flickers of orange light coalesced into the tall, looming figure of the Wraith, staring down at her with blank eyes and a blank expression. 

For a second she couldn’t say anything. Jake had told her if she found someone she wasn’t looking for, she should run - but he’d spoken to her. In trials the only thing she’d ever heard from him had been animalistic snarls when he was hurt. And Claudette had told her that out of all of them, he seemed … sympathetic, sometimes. Willing to let them escape. Willing to turn his back on a rescue he could have stopped. 

But only sometimes. 

She stared up at him and shook herself out of her surprise. 

“He’s not?” she asked, trying to make it a demand and hearing the little edge of fear that made it sound uncertain. 

“No,” said Wraith, “he’s not. But he was, not long ago.” 

“Shit.” She glared at the world around her. Just missed him - and just missed her chance to see what the hell it was he wanted, as if she didn’t already know. “Where did he go?” 

“I couldn’t say. He and I don’t talk much.” 

The way he watched her was … unsettling. Totally blank, almost unseeing if she hadn’t been dead certain he was watching her and only her. But he wasn’t attacking her, and that on its own was probably a good sign. 

“I need to find him,” she said, more to herself than to him. “He’s … I have to stop him.” 

“You can’t.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Not easily.” The stare was getting on her nerves, but before she could snap something, he continued. “You’ve drawn his attention. He is a man devoted to his obsessions. Stopping him now will be difficult for you.” 

“You _know_ what he’s been doing?” 

“I have an idea.” He turned his head to look out at the endless sea of rusting metal and broken-down cars. “He comes here sometimes. To make his sacrifices and plans. He thinks I don’t pay attention.” 

“So you know what his plans are?” She almost stepped toward him, but that empty-eyed attention was back on her, and instead she had to fight the urge to back up. “What are they? What the hell is he trying to do?” 

“I don’t know the details. But they all involve you.” 

“I know that much.” Yui hardened her glare, trying not to glance down at the long club made out of a disturbingly human-looking spine and skull Wraith was carrying. “If you know _anything_ , I need to hear it. I have to figure out how to keep him off the others. If he wants to attack me, fine, but I won’t let him go after them!” 

Wraith stared at her for too long, his silence somehow deeper than the silence of the wrecking yard around them. Then he brought up his club and looked at the skull, the fingers of his free hand resting lightly on the bloody bones. 

“You ask a killer to help you,” he said, “with nothing to give in return?” 

“What would you want?” she asked, even knowing the answer could be worse than anything she could imagine. 

“Nothing you could offer,” he responded without looking up. “But I can’t give you what you seek. I only see his actions, not inside his head. All I can guarantee is that only death will stop him.” 

“I can’t kill him! He can’t even kill me! Not for good!” She glared at Wraith and took a step closer, but the sudden sharp turn of his head back to her stopped her from taking another one. “I have to talk him out of this. Or … scare him out of it, or at least get him focused back on me. Something. _Anything_.” She hesitated, trying to think. “You don’t know anything about him at all? Don’t you guys all talk to each other?” 

“Some of us.” He lowered his weapon. “But as I said, he and I don’t. He talks altogether too much for my liking.” 

“That makes two of us,” she grumbled. 

Silence stretched out again. Yui felt useless. This was going nowhere. She was wasting time out here that she could have been using to find Ghost Face and break his jaw again. As Wraith continued to say nothing, she curled her hands into fists, turned away, got ready to head back toward the fog, and - 

“You would bring his danger back onto you for the sake of the others?” he asked, suddenly, and she glared at him again. 

“I’m not going to let them suffer just to save _myself_ some pain.” 

“Even knowing that he might make you beg for true death?” 

“I’d like to see him try.” 

Wraith was silent again for a few long seconds, watching her. She glared back, unwilling to be the first to look away. 

“Find the Legion,” he said eventually, and she blinked. 

“Legion? Those kids? Why?” 

“They know him better. He stays with them when all other doors are closed to him. They admire him, and he revels in their foolishness. They may be able to tell you more about him.” 

“Enough to get a handle on him?” 

“Possibly. If you’re smart enough, and strong enough.” 

It didn’t sound like an insult, but she grimaced anyway. Still - it was more information than she could have expected. It wasn’t finding him, it wasn’t breaking him into a thousand bloody, broken pieces, but … it was something. 

“Wish I knew how to get there.” 

Wraith said nothing to that, instead turning his back to her. He was leaving, or at least going back to whatever he’d been doing before, and suddenly Yui felt another question bubble up. It wasn’t necessary, and she probably wasn’t going to get an answer, and if she didn’t it wouldn’t make her life any more difficult, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. 

“Why bother helping me?” 

Wraith stopped. She couldn’t see his expression, but there was a sudden, familiar tinge to his voice. Disdain. 

“I don’t like him much,” he said, and stalked off into the murky darkness.


	9. Chapter 9

“The _Legion?_ ” Claudette hissed as they worked on a generator, keeping an ear out for the sounds of a chainsaw roaring too close by. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” 

“Not even remotely.” Yui pulled a wrench out of the toolbox Claudette had brought in, jammed it against a stuck gear, and leaned hard until it gave way. “But it’s the only lead I’ve got. If they know anything about him that I can use, I have to hear it.” 

“What can you do with that information even if you get it?” 

“Get him mad at me again. _Just_ me. Make him focus on going after me instead of any of you.” She glared at the generator, seeing his stupid mask in place of all the split wiring and broken metal. “Maybe I can figure out some kind of weakness to use against him.” 

“Maybe,” Claudette agreed, and Yui braced herself for the ‘but’. “But what if that just makes him angrier, and he figures out you’ll go after him if he kills us instead of you?” 

“He hasn’t figured it out yet. He was sending a message with Tapp.” And it had been a twofold message: both his snide little invitation, and a demonstration of his bottomless killer’s fury. She’d hidden from him, and he didn’t like it. “If I keep paying attention to him, he’ll lose interest in anyone else.” 

Claudette didn’t reply right away. Yui had a feeling she knew why, and didn’t say anything herself. Yes, it was better for him to be fixated on her instead of torturing others to death just to get back at her, but she knew without having to ask that Claudette didn’t like the idea of all that lunatic fervor directed at _her_. 

It was reassuring. Made something in her clench in a _good_ way, instead of in cold fear. There were only so many ways Claudette could have her back in a place like this, but she _would_ , no matter what. 

They finished the generator and crept away as quietly as possible, hoping to go unheard and unseen in the semidarkness around them when, eventually, the Hillbilly came to find whoever had finished it. But the roar of the chainsaw remained in the distance whenever they heard it - a good sign for them, if a bad one for someone else. 

“I don’t know,” Claudette finally said, when they were certain they weren’t about to get sawed in half. “Just because you haven’t gotten killed looking for him yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I mean … Legion might not be the worst, but there’s no rules outside a trial.” 

“I know that. Trust me. I’ll bring a weapon with me and try to get out if they decide they don’t want to help - ” 

She stopped and drew back behind a wall, pulling Claudette with her. They huddled back against it, holding their breath, as uneven footsteps approached in a hurry. They heard hard, panting breaths, a snarl of something deeper than rage … and then it all faded away again, leaving them alone. 

“ … if they don’t want to help me.” 

“There’s more than one of them.” 

“Yeah, well, that just makes it easier to hit someone.” 

“Yui … ” 

“I know. I know. I’ll come back. Look, you’re the one who told me Wraith might be trustworthy.” 

“No, I said he might be understanding,” she corrected, looking down and then around. “Or merciful. Not _trustworthy_. They’re all killers at the end of the day.” 

But Yui still wasn’t convinced. That tiny flicker of disdain in his voice when he said _I don’t like him much_ seemed real. And if the killers had rivalries, animosities, even outright hatreds … then why not sabotage each other? 

Claudette pulled her over to a pile of dark weeds, where they found Steve crouched and bleeding. They patched him up as best they could and headed back toward the nearest generator, but the Hillbilly split them up with a sudden arrival, smashing the generator with his sledgehammer and gunning for Steve again. 

From there it was a normal trial, or as normal as they ever got: running, hiding, working frantically and trying hard not to die. Raw terror kept her going long enough to find the exit, but she wasn’t willing to leave until she found Claudette. 

Screaming told her it would be on a hook, and she was right. Yui kept her distance until the Hillbilly went roaring off to find someone else to gut, missing her in her hiding spot by a matter of inches; then she was pulling Claudette down and dragging her by the wrist toward the open gate. 

Under their feet, the ground was starting to crack and glow, the warning sign of the world about to tear itself apart and end them if their pursuer couldn’t. Claudette had told her that once, that hadn’t been the case; once a door opened, they could stay in a trial as long as they needed to. But things had changed as more people arrived. Even something as terrible and monstrous as the Entity could decide to spice things up. 

“He’s coming!” Claudette shouted over the rumbling around them. Yui glanced back and saw him, back hunched, face twisted, both hands on his chainsaw. There was a clear path between him and them and he could pick up speed in a _hurry_. She kept running, glancing back, hearing the chainsaw roar to life and seeing, with every glance, him getting closer and closer - 

She tightened her grip around Claudette’s wrist and dropped, yanking her down as she went. They both hit the ground just as he got to them. The chainsaw missed them by inches; she felt it brush her hair as she went. 

But the Hillbilly went right past them, and they were still in one piece, and they could see smoke rising from the mechanical end of the chainsaw. 

They didn’t need to say anything to know this was their only chance. They both scrambled up and bolted. Yui put herself between Claudette and the potential danger of another hit, her own injuries that much less severe, and ignored the pounding heartbeat in her head and the pounding footsteps just behind her. 

Claudette tumbled out into the fog seconds before Yui did. There was no feeling of safety or relief - it was hard to know when things could change - but when she glanced back and saw him standing just inside the trial grounds, his sledgehammer buried in one of the pillars that marked their way out, she almost laughed.   


* * *

  
Not long after they got back, and despite Claudette’s protests, Yui went to find the Legion. 

Or she was going to try, anyway. She had no idea if she’d be able to find them. Maybe she’d get lost in the fog, or miss them by minutes, or maybe she’d find Ghost Face too early. She still hadn’t seen him since he got Tapp. Partly that was just the way trials happened, and partly she wasn’t interested in actually finding him. The anger had cooled. The fury had given way to uncertainty. 

Which, she knew, might be giving him that much more drive to hurt and kill. But there was only so much she could do, especially when the fog kept spitting her back out at the campfire at every attempt. 

Now, it went on and on. Cold grayness all around her, endless and quiet. Not totally silent. She could hear a howling in the distance. Not an animal - more like a human trying to be one, either through insanity or endless pain. It ended in a noise like a broken bird call, and she shuddered, hoping that was one killer they weren’t about to run into. 

The wrench stuck in her jeans wasn’t much comfort. It was cold against her thigh, reminding her of the fact that her first attempt to hit someone with a weapon out here hadn’t ended very well. And Legion … there was a reason they were called that. Against one of them she had a chance. Two, maybe. After that, she’d be lucky to crawl away. 

This time her luck held out, and when the fog cleared it was in a place even colder than the rainy forest had been. The trees were bare, the ground was flat rock and dirt, and there was snow in places, mostly on the rocks, higher tree branches, and the roof of the ski lodge she could see in the distance. Yui wrapped her arms around herself and tried not to shiver. She should have borrowed a coat. 

Too late now. She got a grip on herself and made her way through the forest. It was more sparse than some, the trees not nearly as dense and so not that easy to hide in. It worked both ways: she couldn’t sneak around, but neither could Legion. 

Not that they were much for sneaking. 

It didn’t take long before she thought she heard footsteps, but she wasn’t expecting to round a tree and see one of them standing directly in her path. Hood up, knife out, feet planted in a way that said they weren’t about to move for anyone but just _give_ them a chance. She stared, trying to figure out which one it was. 

One of the girls. It wasn’t that obvious from the angle, but the mask was a giveaway, too, the mouth crossed out instead of a wild grin. She wasn’t any less dangerous than the others, but given a choice, Yui would have definitely preferred _her_ to one of the guys. 

“I need to talk to you,” she said, as loudly as she dared in the otherwise deathly silent forest. “I need information. Wraith sent me.” 

The girl didn’t move until she said _Wraith_ , and then her knife lifted, her head tilting slightly. Yui had figured there wasn’t going to be any chance of getting what she needed unless she had a recommendation. 

“He did?” The girl’s voice was level and careful. No hint of emotion other than a tinge of curiosity, which was a hell of a lot better than anger. “Why? He knows this place better than us.” 

“It’s not the place I’m interested in,” Yui said, bracing herself in case she needed to grab the wrench. “I need to know about Ghost Face.” 

_That_ made her tense, just enough that Yui could see it. Her fingers curled tight around the knife, but she didn’t charge; if anything, she leaned away, but only for a second. 

“You’re her, aren’t you?” she finally said. “The one who got his mask off?” 

“Yeah. That was me.” Yui could only hope the frustration came through loud and clear. 

“Why would you need information on him?” 

“Because he’s doing shit I want him to stop doing.” She glared at the girl, though most of the anger was directed at someone that wasn’t even in range to pick up on it. “I need to figure out why he’s doing it so I can get one step ahead of him. Or figure out some weakness to use against him. Or just … anything, so I can get into his head and smash it apart if I have to.” 

“That’s going to be harder than you think,” the girl said after a pause. “And he’s not going to be happy if he finds out we told you _anything_.” 

“I’m still going to try.” She glanced at the knife. “It’s not like I’ll stay dead here if he kills me. And you can defend yourself, can’t you? He’s one guy.” 

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you.” 

The silence dragged on again. Yui started to wonder if she was going to get what she’d come for. Maybe she hadn’t been directed wrong, but this whole place was a confusing nightmare; maybe if they _admired_ him so much, they wouldn’t sell him out at all. 

“Can you fix a generator outside a trial?” the girl asked, suddenly, and Yui raised her eyebrows. The knowledge was there, planted in her brain just fully enough that she could probably manage it if there was no other choice, but … 

“Maybe. Why?” 

“We’ve got one that broke a while ago.” She watched the knife swing back and forth in the girl’s hand. “If you could get it running again, we might be able to help you.” 

A deal. A deal with an actual way she could hold up her end of it _without_ ending up bleeding in the dirt. It was worth a shot. 

“Okay. Deal.” 

The knife snapped shut and vanished into a jacket pocket. 

“Follow me.” 

Around the back side of the lodge was a little shack she’d never seen in a trial. Inside, light came through the spaces between the boards to illuminate an almost-familiar looking generator, shelves with toolboxes and cans, and something that looked like a bloody pile of bandages. The cold managed to cut down on the smell of it, but she grimaced as she crouched down by the generator anyway. 

“You can use this.” The girl pulled a toolbox off a shelf and handed it down to Yui. “But only while you’re here.” 

“Fine.” She could tell the others anyway. Jake could make use of it - if he felt like going wandering again, trying to find something useful, this was one hell of a jackpot. 

The generator was icy cold to the touch and blown out in a few places, but it wasn’t as ruined as some of the ones she’d worked on. The inner workings were a little unfamiliar, the style a little wrong … maybe this had been crafted special by the Entity, just for them. And now it was broken. Sounded about right. 

“Are the others around?” she asked as she got to work. The girl leaned in the doorway, watching her. 

“Some.” 

“The rest in a trial?” The hard edge to her voice make the girl snort. 

“No. Out stealing.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Sure. Just for fun. There’s not a lot to do around here when we’re not in a trial.” 

Better than stalking, Yui thought as she focused back on the generator. Better than trying to follow survivors around. Better than getting obsessed and dangerous. 

“So why’d you take his mask off?” 

The million yen question, she supposed. Yui shrugged and reached into the toolbox for a pair of pliers. 

“I couldn’t do much else,” she said, reaching into the machine and pulling out what she hoped was a rusted screw. “He was taking his time trying to hurt me. Fucking around. I couldn’t fight back, but I could grab, and his mask was the closest thing I found.” She flicked the nail that came out into the corner of the shack. “Figured it’d get his attention and make him back off. Didn’t realize he’d take it so fucking _personally_.” 

“Masks are kind of a big deal around here.” There was another brief silence, and then the next question came in a tone more curious and almost eager than she’d expected. “What’s he look like?” 

“Nothing special.” Yui pulled at the generator’s start-up cord; it choked, but didn’t go. Maybe it was out of gas. “Just another guy. I’d say he was good looking if he wasn’t a completely insane murderer.” 

Which was probably the wrong thing to say in the presence of a different, probably also completely insane murderer, but the girl only watched her, silent again. It felt a little more thoughtful this time. 

Something in the generator was starting to work. She leaned in, dug around with a different wrench than the one she’d brought, felt something go _clonk_ and suddenly there was a choking noise from inside it. The smell of old burned _something_ flooded the air for a few seconds. 

“Might have got something caught in it,” she hazarded, thought in all honesty she didn’t know _how_ she knew. Another mystery of the fog. “I should be able to get it to work now - ” 

“Jules? Where are you?” 

A voice cut through the cold silence outside. The girl looked out into the gray world, then back at Yui; she hesitated, but not for long. 

“I’m back here, Frank.” 

Names. It was a start. It also told her she was now facing two of them if things went bad. And while Legion didn’t talk anywhere near as much as Ghost Face in a trial, she’d heard them before, and the one coming their way was a bad one. 

“The hell are you doing here?” She heard him getting closer, footsteps getting louder on the dirt. “Trying to get that thing going again? It’s gonna take a miracle for the spiderdick to get off its ass and - ” 

His voice stopped. She glanced over. He was standing just outside the doorway, his mask pushed up into his hood so she could see his face for once. Normal, for the most part; dirty, a little scarred, and there was a flicker of orange light along one side of his face that might have been a trick of the light and might have been real. 

His expression was frozen as they stared at each other, and then he turned to the girl, anger starting to creep in. Yui’s fingers closed around the wrench that much tighter. 

“What the fuck is _she_ doing here?” 

“She came looking for us. Said the Wraith told her we could help. She wants information on D - on Ghost Face.” She paused; Yui cursed inside at the fact that she’d caught herself before letting his name slip. “I said we’d do it if she could get this fixed. That way we’ve got the lights back on, at least.” 

At least? Yui almost stopped working and pointed out they owed her some information for this, but the two of them were staring at each other so intensely she didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, the damn thing was almost done anyway; if she left now, even they could probably finish the job. 

There was tension in the air. Little twitches, fingers tightening into fists, his jaw clenching. A part of her wondered if there wasn’t a conversation going on outside her range of hearing. Who knew what the hell kinds of things the killers could do? Invisibility, blending into the shadows, teleporting … somehow, psychic powers didn’t seem too far out of the ordinary. 

The tension snapped when Frank snorted and stepped back. 

“Fine. Whatever.” He reached up and pulled his mask down, hiding the relative normalcy behind the scrawled grin and staring eyes. “I would’ve just sold him out for nothing, but better we get something out of it. Good idea.” 

“Oh, come on,” Yui grumbled, grabbing the cord and yanking on it again. 

This time the generator choked, struggled, and finally came to life. Both of the Legion turned to look at the lodge. 

“Upstairs hall light’s on,” said Jules, if that was really her name. 

“Fucking finally. Okay, come on in. Let’s talk.” 

Yui pushed herself up and stepped back out into the too-cold air as Frank headed inside. Jules stuck closer, pulling the shed door shut behind them and leading her toward the lodge. 

“Call me Julie,” she said. “You’re Yui, right?” 

“Yeah. He tell you that?” 

“No. I’ve heard people call you that in trials.” She paused thoughtfully. “Screamed it, mostly.” 

Yui gave her a flat look. 

The inside of the lodge wasn’t much warmer than the outside, but there was a fire roaring in a pit at the center. She looked around. It was almost identical to the way it looked in trials except for the lights, now back on again, and a few personal touches here and there. Things hanging on the walls over otherwise familiar graffiti. Clothes hanging over the banister along the second floor balcony. Stuff she couldn’t recognize - and wasn’t sure she _wanted_ to identify - scattered on the floor or piled up by the walls. Signs that people really lived here, or at least did their best to pretend they did. 

Someone came running in from the opposite door. It was the other girl, with the dyed hair and the long-sleeved sweatshirt and the really, really creepy mask. 

“Julie! I saw the lights were on! Did you get the - ” 

She stopped dead when she saw Yui, frozen in place. 

“Yeah, we did,” said Julie, waving Yui toward the couch that surrounded the fire. “It’s okay, Susie. She’s just here to talk.” 

Cautiously, Yui sat down as the girl in the hoodie edged away from her, toward the opposite side of the fire. Frank dropped himself down not too far away and sprawled out, which made her sneer even if there was more than enough room for all of them here. Behind her she heard Julie checking the lights, and then behind and _above_ she heard creaking, which on a glance back revealed the fourth member of the group looking down at her from the second floor from behind his particularly eerie skull mask. 

“C’mon down,” Frank said, waving to him. “She got the lights back on, so now we get to dish on the ghost.” 

The stairs creaked as he came down in silence to join the girl called Susie on the other side of the fire. Finally Julie sat down next to Frank, close enough that their knees touched, and despite the warmth of the fire in front of her, Yui suddenly felt very, very alone and surrounded in what was a decidedly unfriendly place. 

“So,” Frank said, stretching his legs out toward the fire. “What do you want to know?” 

“Anything.” Yui glanced around at them, feeling their masked gazes on her. “I thought he was finally letting go of what I did, but now he’s killing the others to force me to come find him. I can’t let that keep happening.” 

“So go find him.” 

“I’m going to,” she snapped. “But not until I know what the fuck his problem is.” Frank snickered, and she continued. “Since killing him’s not an option, I need to at least keep him focused on me and only me. And maybe stop him from being so focused at all.” 

“Good fucking luck.” 

“Ghost Face is … ” Julie hesitated. Her mask stayed fixed on Yui, but the others were watching her now. “Do you know anything about him? Other than what he can do as a killer.” 

“I know he’s crazy, but that’s not exactly out of the ordinary for this place.” 

“Well … I wouldn’t say he’s crazy.” She drummed her fingers on her knee. “He’s a serial killer. Or he was.” 

“So?” 

“I mean back in the real world. Back before he was stuck in this place.” 

Yui almost said _so?_ again, but then it clicked: serial killer. Not just killer. Not murderer. _Serial killer_ , with all the baggage that went with it. She didn’t know a lot about them - she didn’t hear about them much, especially Western ones - but some information filtered through. 

“He stalked people for weeks at a time,” Julie continued. “Followed them to their homes, figured out their routines, what their schedules were … and when he had that all memorized, he’d break in and kill them. Double digit stab wounds. Never left any evidence behind, either. The cops never caught him.” 

“Does he brag about it?” she asked, appalled. 

“Sometimes. But I read about it, too.” Julie laced her fingers together on her knees. “I used to collect stuff about killers. He was active when I was still doing that seriously.” 

Yui forced her expression to stay exactly the way it was. 

“He disappeared, though. Back then I assumed he’d moved on, and then … I had other priorities, so I didn’t keep up. But now I know he ended up here.” 

“But … I thought you got here before he did.” Yui glanced around at them. “That’s what the others said.” 

“We did,” said the skull mask on the other side of the fire. “Time’s fucked around here.” 

“ … right. Okay.” She looked back at Julie. “So he was just as much of an asshole stalker before as he is now.” 

“Yeah. And he was very good at it. Better than he is here. He doesn’t have as much freedom to figure you guys out. He can’t get in close to the campfire, so he has to make do with what he picks up in trials, or from other killers, and that doesn’t happen a lot.” 

“He’s not popular, huh?” 

“Most of them hate him,” Frank cut in. “‘Course, most of them hate _us_ , too, the fucking assholes, but that’s just because we run wild all over them. _He’s_ on the shitlist because he does all his stupid stalker stuff to them, too, and breaks into their places to annoy them.” 

“But not your shitlist?” she asked wryly. “Wraith said you admire him.” 

“Fuck that!” Frank snarled, slamming a fist into one of the moldering pillows. “We don’t _admire_ him! Don’t fucking tell him that, or we’ll never hear the end of it. His ego doesn’t need the boost.” 

“Tell me about it.” 

“Admire’s the wrong word,” Julie said, “but … he’s impressive. What he did, how effective he was, how dangerous … ” She saw the look on Yui’s face and shrugged. “We’re not nice people, either. And if we hadn’t gotten stuck here, we might have been a lot like him.” 

“A pack of serial killers?” 

“Maybe.” Her tone was casual and distant, and nobody refuted her. Despite the fact that they’d let her in and were treating her like she wasn’t a target, Yui reminded herself that they were killers - and if they were in this place, then they’d probably done something horrible. “But maybe not. We’re … serial killers tend to show it early, in ways we didn’t ever deal with.” 

“Such as?” 

“There’s three main predictors in children: setting fires, hurting animals, and bedwetting after age twelve.” 

Frank burst out laughing. 

“ _Really_? Holy shit, I am so asking him if he pissed himself when he was in high school.” 

“He’ll just stab you,” Susie said. 

“Like that’s new.” 

“And,” Julie went on, as if the interruption hadn’t happened, “they tend to get bullied, or abused, or treated like shit when they’re kids.” She paused. Out of the corner of her eye Yui saw the others withdraw a little more into the shadows - including Frank, who was still snickering to himself. “That’s not always a guarantee on its own, but combined with the rest, it sets the stage early on.” 

“So he probably got his ass kicked when he was a kid?” 

“Or got ignored a lot. He’s a flashy killer when he isn’t hiding. You should know that.” 

Yui stared at Julie’s mask, only half seeing it. He _was_ flashy. His stupid outfit and stupider mask shouldn’t have been able to hide like they did, and once they saw it, they always wondered how they’d missed it before. He was showing off, making sure they knew he was there when he was ready … it screamed _attention whore_ , now that she thought about it. 

Maybe he’d been beaten as a kid. Maybe his parents had ignored him. Maybe he was just a shithead from birth. It didn’t really matter. She’d known people who dealt with shitty lives and worse parents and managed to grow up to be normal, kind, capable people; half the girls in her gang had run away from home to escape a nightmare made real, and she’d trust any one of them with her life. There was no justification for what he did, or had done. 

“He’s a careful planner,” Julie said, as Yui’s attention drifted back to the conversation at hand. “Very organized. And … he’s smart, but some of that might just be him projecting. Same as all the charm and friendliness.” 

“He’s faking being smart?” 

“A lot of them do. They aren’t geniuses. Not like the way the movies say.” She sighed. “But I guess that’s what sells tickets.” 

“Jesus, Jules, you should have told me this shit way earlier.” 

“I probably did. You just weren’t listening. And you know what he’ll say if you get on his case for being dumb, Mr. Dropped Out Of High School At Seventeen.” 

“Whatever.” 

“That’s all useful, but … what about _him?_ As a person? Not just a killer.” She looked at Julie, then at Frank and the two in the shadows. “Like his name? You know what it is.” 

“Yeah,” Frank said, “and we’re not giving it to you.” 

“Why not?” 

“He’s already pissed off enough that you saw his face. He doesn’t let _anybody_ see what’s under the mask. Not us, not A - not … what the hell do you call her? The Pig. Doesn’t let her see it, or if he has he sure as shit hasn’t told _us_.” Frank resettled himself on the couch and tilted his head at her. “It’s a weird thing for him. You get his name? He’s going to know we gave it to you, and I’m not into getting gutted like one of you fuckheads.” 

“And it’ll make things a lot worse for you,” said the skull mask in the shadows - the guy she still didn’t have a name for. “He’ll go crazy if you know his name _and_ his face.” 

“Why does it matter? I can’t drag his ass to the cops.” 

“Don’t know. He just doesn’t want people knowing about him.” He leaned forward, the fire giving the white markings on his mask a new, eerie brightness. “All that’s supposed to matter is Ghost Face.” 

She stared at him. Was that it? Was that the reason he was getting so intense about things - because she’d seen who he was underneath it all? Was that _all_? It seemed so tiny, so stupidly pathetic - but he wasn’t exactly on the upside of the sanity curve, was he? 

“He doesn’t talk about himself all that much,” said Frank. “I mean - he never shuts up about being Ghost Face and all the shit he did back then, but that’s pretty much it.” 

Yui’s eyes fell to the fire. It looked a lot like their own campfire, just smaller and more contained. Disconnected thoughts were lining up. She’d seen something even the other killers hadn’t. She knew _him_ , or at least what he looked like, when all she should have ever known was the murderer in the mask and the bloody leather. She’d _taken_ something that was important to him, even if she hadn’t meant to … and so he’d tried to do the same in return. 

But she’d taken it back. That was probably a first for him. Usually his victims probably didn’t have the opportunity to do much more than die. And since he was already pissed off, that had just made things get even worse, like a broken mirror getting smashed, going from awkward to unusable. 

And all she’d done was try to spite him. 

“I think I get it,” she said, more to herself than to Legion. “I think … I might be able to do something.” 

“Yeah? Come tell us if you do. ‘Course I’m sure if that happens he’ll be back here complaining about it.” 

“I’d say watch yourself,” said Julie, “but I think you know what he can do.” 

“Better than I wish I did.” Yui looked around at them again. “Thanks for the help. I can’t say I was expecting you really would.” 

“He’s a sack of shit. You making him look like a moron has been great. Plus, you got the lights back on.” Frank gestured to the ceiling. “It’s way past time he should have gotten his ass handed to him by someone he kicks the shit out of.” 

“Still,” she said, standing up. “I always thought all the killers were on their own side.” 

“We’re on _our_ side,” said Julie, standing with her. “They’re each out to protect what’s theirs. Nobody’s exactly friends out here.” 

She headed out of the relative warmth of the lodge into the freezing cold outside and followed Julie into the fog among the trees. 

“If he’s around here a lot, aren’t you technically friends with him?” 

“We don’t mind him being around most of the time,” she said without looking over. “He’s not the worst person that could charge in here. Frank likes to fight him. I like listening to him talk about his kills. But at the end of the day, no. He’s not a friend. Frank said it: nobody’s friends out here.” 

“None of you?” 

“The Entity doesn’t really encourage friendship.” They both glanced up at the endlessly gray sky. “We’re here to kill for it. Not get to know each other. Besides, they mostly try to kill us when they find us, and as far as I know, they do the same for anyone else they find. Survivors _or_ other killers.” 

“Seems like you guys would have all teamed up to take us down.” Yui shivered. Not far ahead the trees disappeared into a solid gray wall of fog. 

“Competition makes us all more dangerous.” Julie stopped and looked at Yui. “Or at least, I think that’s the idea. Good luck trying to talk him down. He’s never been this obsessed with anything as long as I’ve known him.” 

“Thanks.” This time it was more dry and bitter. “Is there an easier way to find him than walking around and hoping?” 

“Not really. He doesn’t have his own territory, so he has to go wherever he can. If he winds up here … we’ll stay out of your way.” 

The two of them watched each other. Yui wondered what was under her mask, what she had been like back in the world and why it was that Legion was so much closer to normal than any of the others. Why the Entity would allow one person to be normal and another to be … insane. More insane than even Ghost Face was. Or did that have nothing to do with the Entity, and everything to do with the way they lived before they got here? 

The thought lingered for a few seconds, and then faded. It wasn’t that important right now. Once she’d dealt with Ghost Face, she could figure that one out. 

“Thanks for the help,” she said, one more time. “Here’s hoping I won’t need it again.” 

“I’m sure we’ll have something else that needs fixing if you do,” Julie said wryly. 

Yui turned and headed back into the fog, her mind already lining up what to say the next time she found the stalker she was looking for.


	10. Chapter 10

Yui was gone a long time. Too long. Claudette had gotten more and more nervous as the lack of her presence dragged on and on, trying to distract herself with helping and healing and organizing, but nothing really helped. 

If they’d just killed her, she would have showed up at the campfire, but outside a trial … things could get _bad_ outside a trial. And she’d just wandered away like Jake did. Claudette _knew_ Jake left more often than he should have, ever since it had just been the four of them around the campfire, and she also knew it wasn’t always for tools or medkits or anything he could find. She wanted to ask him if he could help, or maybe go looking for Yui, but then the fog had swept in and dragged her to a trial and she didn’t have a chance. 

At least the trial itself was a good enough distraction to keep her from worrying too much. Especially when she found out who was stalking around the grounds, and not out there stalking Yui. 

The first time they’d run into Ghost Face … he’d come alone. No companion survivor, no new haunting trial ground to kill them on. He’d just showed up and started killing, laughing at them, mocking them, playing nasty little games when he felt like it. He’d been a real shock after the slew of furious, agonized, or deathly silent killers, and the fact that he was creeping over old familiar grounds had been somehow worse than if he’d dropped something totally new on them. 

He hadn’t brought his own baggage with him, hints of whatever had brought him to the fog; he’d just made himself at home on other people’s. And he listened to them when they talked, and he talked _to_ them, and he wrung information out of them … and if he caught the last person left alive in a trial, they’d be lucky if he just wanted to play a game. 

Not that he was unique among any of the other killers in that, but - still. 

And now he was after Yui. Claudette felt a sting of guilt about that. She’d started it, after all - if she’d never mentioned he broke her glasses in the first place, maybe Yui wouldn’t have gone after him. It had been the tipping point, the straw that broke the camel’s back. But nobody could have expected it to snowball like it had. He’d never been so focused on one person before for any reason, and they’d given him plenty of reason to hate them individually. 

She tried to shake off the thoughts. He was here, stuck with them in a trial, unable to leave until they were all dead or running free; Yui was safe enough as long as the Legion didn’t decide she wasn’t worth their time. And since it was her and Jake and Feng and Adam, he was probably going to have a rough time finding them all in any kind of hurry. 

Even if they were stuck in the institute, which gave him a million little places to hide. 

She worked as best she could on a generator while her mind was only half paying attention. Even after so long, it was hard to focus on as many things as they had to worry about all at once. Not screwing up in connecting something, listening for screams, listening for _him_ , trying to pay attention to where they’d seen lights and flashing warnings and blood … 

And any movement, even the smallest flicker, in the corner of an eye could tell them something. She saw something flash in her peripheral vision and glanced over. 

“How’s it going?” asked Ghost Face. 

In a panic her hands slipped, and something inside the generator exploded. Claudette flinched away, but he was close enough that he’d be able to stab her if she ran; she pressed her back into the wall and stared at him instead, trying to remind herself that if he was here then he wasn’t on the others. 

It wasn’t as comforting as it had been before. 

“Not so great, huh?” He nudged the generator without looking away from her. “Can’t win ‘em all. Of course, I guess you’d know that better than anybody else.” 

She stayed silent. He was building up to something. Best to let him reach it on his own. 

“You’ve been here so long. Died in so many trials, been abandoned by so many teammates … it must sting.” He put a foot on the generator but didn’t kick it just yet. “But I hear things are getting better. You’ve got someone who cares about you, don’t you?” 

Her heart jumped into her throat. _She still had the hachimaki on her._ She hadn’t let it out of her sight since Yui had given it to her, and never would, but here and now, what if he found it? Would he search her? Yui’d said she told him she left it by the campfire, where he couldn’t get it. He might not look for it, but she couldn’t count on that. 

She had to keep him distracted. Had to keep him _talking_. And then maybe the rest of the generators would get done, too. 

“I - I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stuttered, and he laughed. 

“Oh, really? Am I just picking up gossip? Because I’ve heard you and a certain _someone_ spend a lot of time together. Holding hands, even. Sharing secrets.” He tilted his head and brought up his knife, but not to stab her just yet. “It sounds adorable. But of course, she’d not always there, is she? Walks away sometimes, and you don’t know where she’s gone?” 

Claudette watched him, not daring to move and let his attention wander. 

“She’s been looking for me,” he continued. “I’m sure you know that much. But I wonder … has she told you what she and I have been doing, out there in the fog?” 

“She told me you two had sex.” 

He was silent for just long enough that she knew he hadn’t expected that answer, and that somewhere in his head he was scrambling for a reply. A part of her wanted to laugh. 

“And how does that make you feel?” he said, still as brightly as before but now with a brittle edge. 

“It hurt,” she said, truthfully, because even if she understood and could forgive the sting was still there, slowly fading. “But I know this place better than she does - and better than you do. There’s worse mistakes to make than that.” 

“Oh, yes, I’m sure there are.” He started to close in on her, but paused when the roar of a finished generator cut through the air. “Like doing it more than once. Hey, don’t you have a crush on Jake, too? Better stick with Yui. You don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with him.” 

She felt her face getting hot. And he was still coming closer, even though the others were working, making him lose opportunities to kill them all and earn the Entity’s favor. 

“How’s that relevant?” she asked, dreading the answer but wanting to keep him occupied for as long as she could no matter how much her skin wanted to crawl off her body. 

“Think about it for a little while. After all, you’ve known him longer.” Ghost Face lifted his knife and brought it up. Not at the usual angle for stabbing - it looked like he was ready to _cut_. “Now … let me see. Think you can do me a favor?” 

The knife shot forward, but she was already moving, dodging to the side just quick enough that the blade buried itself in the wall where she’d been standing. Claudette took off down the hall and leaped over the nearest windowsill, hearing nothing behind her but the rush of his footsteps and the swish of his coat, remembering all too clearly what Tapp had said about his last encounter with Ghost Face.  
  


* * *

  
Hearing Claudette tell her about Ghost Face trying to target _her_ in a trial was enough to make Yui’s blood burn in her veins, but at least this time there had been a happy - well, relatively positive - ending. 

“He didn’t expect me to know what you and he did. It threw him off.” Claudette was grinning, and Yui couldn’t help but smile back. “I bet if he’d had the chance, he would have wasted half the trial telling me about it.” 

“And who knows what he would have said.” And how _she_ would have tried to respond to it, justifying the lie, fighting the details he might have given. 

“Yeah. I might not have believed him, but … it would have always been hanging in the air.” 

In a way, it still was - but Yui knew that by being honest she’d managed to avoid having to talk about any details, or try to wave away that it had been _good_. Though as she’d said to him, at this point, anybody probably would have been good. 

“It’s not going to happen again. I promise.” She looked back at the fire and sighed. “But I do have to find him again.” 

“Were the Legion helpful?” 

“Not really, but I think I’ve got enough to at least keep his attention on me and not anybody else.” 

“If you’re sure.” Claudette didn’t sound sure at all. Yui tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it was strained. 

“I don’t have a choice. Either I find him and I talk him out of this, or he keeps going after the rest of you. I won’t let him.” Her almost-smile dropped. “He already tried to corner you. He knows you and I are … it’ll be the first thing he tries.” 

“I know. I just wish you didn’t have to be the one to do it.” 

“He’s not going to listen to anybody else.” 

Still, she lingered by the campfire for a while, trying to build up her confidence and get her thoughts lined up. If she could find a spot in his past that she could jam a wrench into and pry open, maybe he’d feel threatened enough to back off, or pissed off enough to narrow down his whole world to her. Maybe he’d give something away that would hurt him even worse than what little she could do. 

There wasn’t much else she could hope for. Aside from the Entity intervening and turning him inside out for the rest of eternity, anyway. 

Eventually she got up and headed for the fog again, her fingers sliding out of Claudette’s hand reluctantly as she went. She had to get control of this. She couldn’t leave him to do whatever he wanted, gutting people to try and upset her or turn them against her. Maybe that was his end goal - to have them force her away from the campfire so she had no choice but to wander in the fog where he could find her. It seemed stupid, and entirely dependent on the Entity’s will, but … 

The damn thing sure as hell favored the killers most of the time. Maybe he’d done well enough to curry more than a little favor with it. 

This time she ended up in the burned gray forest again, but instead of seeing the chapel in front of her, she saw the asylum. Broken, gutted by fire and still smoldering, it wasn’t much of a comfort to see, but better here than closer to the Clown. 

Yui was silent for a while, wandering through the trees. She had to keep calm this time, difficult as that was. If she acted like she was in control, maybe she would be. Of course, that depended entirely on whether or not he was even here, but … 

After what she figured had been long enough, she stopped, took a breath to steel herself, and looked straight ahead. 

“I know you’re here,” she said, flat and cold. 

“You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.” 

She turned around. He was leaning against a tree, arms folded, mask fixed on her like there was an iron bar between them. 

“I’ve had trouble finding you before.” She hooked a thumb in the pocket of her pants and glared at him. “It’s not up to us where we end up.” 

“It’s not up to _you_ ,” he corrected. “I can go wherever I want, and nothing stops me. Not even our benevolent spider god above.” 

“I’m sure.” 

He pushed away from the tree and started walking toward her. His hands were empty, which meant his intent wasn’t deadly just yet. She didn’t move. 

“I heard you got my message.” 

“I sure fucking did,” she snapped. “What the hell was that supposed to accomplish? Forcing me to look for you? You couldn’t just wait until the next trial?” 

“I waited,” he said, voice so normal it was almost unsettling. “You didn’t show. Trial after trial. And you didn’t come to gloat so I could slit your fucking throat and make you regret it.” 

“That’s exactly why I didn’t. I got what I wanted. We were finished.” 

“We’re not finished.” It was almost a purr, one from the biggest, deadliest wildcat she could imagine. It made sweat prickle on her brow. “Not by a long shot.” 

“Oh yes we are.” She still refused to step back, even as he drew closer. “I’m not going to let some nasty piece of shit serial killer stalk _me_.” 

“No?” He didn’t stop. He got within five feet, two feet, a foot - and then it was step back or let him get close enough to touch. Yui at least kept her expression as flat, solid disdain. “I don’t think you have a choice around here.” 

“If I lodge a wrench down your throat, maybe it’ll teach you to keep your distance.” 

“I’ve dealt with worse in this place. Trust me.” 

He backed her up into a tree. Hitting it startled her, and suddenly he was almost flat against her, not _quite_ pinning her but all he’d have to do was grab. She hardened her glare. 

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, and it wasn’t the usual bright, snide question. He might have been serious. She raised an eyebrow at him as he lifted an arm to rest it against the tree above their heads. 

“Afraid of _you?_ No. You’re garbage. I told you that when this all started. Of what you can do? Maybe.” 

“It’s more than ‘maybe’. You’re sweating. And if you weren’t scared of the idea that I’ll keep killing your friends, you wouldn’t be here.” 

She felt one of his knees idly slip between hers, making her twitch. He reached down and pulled out his knife, which made her blood go cold, but he only reached up and jammed it into the tree above them. Getting rid of it. 

“Want to take your mind off it for a while?” 

The thought cut through everything else in her head. He was asking her to fuck him _again?_ A little less directly but no less subtly for how close he was. And the idea was - _tempting_ as all hell, partly because it had been so good the first time, and partly because she knew she’d get another chance to tear him apart when they were done. Plus, it might give her the chance to wring more answers out of him than he’d give otherwise. 

But the temptation was fleeting. After the kills, the torture, the threats, and the still-stinging guilt over having done it the first time, she wasn’t going to give in again. If she was going to find someone to enjoy herself with, it’d be someone she actually liked, or at _least_ another survivor. Not him. Not a monster. 

“No,” she hissed, and heard him laugh at her hesitation. “I’m serious. I’m still regretting doing it in the first place.” 

“Really.” His free hand landed on her hip. She would have edged away, but that would just put her closer to the rest of him. “And what if I said I’ll hurt your friends if you don’t?” 

“You’re going to hurt them anyway,” she managed to say instead of snarling, voice dripping with disgust. “I’m not going to let you scare me into it.” 

“Good point.” She didn’t hear any disappointment. His fingers trailed up along her side, pressing down slightly to check for a weapon. “You’d just try to fight me again even if I did, wouldn’t you? Shame. Here I thought we could enjoy ourselves for a while.” 

“Should I be impressed by your gentlemanly restraint?” 

“Up to you.” His hand paused at her shoulder, lifted, and reached for the knife again. “Some of the others are a little more easily swayed by - ” 

She cut him off with an uppercut to the jaw, as hard as she could manage. Yui thought she _heard_ his teeth click and followed it up with a fast blow to the solar plexus. There was enough leather padding to keep it from being fully effective, but she knew as soon as she landed a hit he was going down. 

She didn’t let up until he did. Until he hit the ground on his back, choking, winded, and she landed on top of him, pinning him as best she could. She’d partly hoped to avoid getting into a fight here since she wanted to _stop_ him from hurting people, but as soon as he’d started to threaten her, try to _coerce_ her, the bloodlust had found a way in. 

He was dazed and distracted, but it wouldn’t last long. When she grabbed at his mask this time, it was intent, not just desperate. It took a hard yank to rip it off, but the slip came free eventually. And she saw him again, this time her vision not clouded by pain and blood. 

He _was_ older than her, but not by too much, like she’d thought before. A few very faint soon-to-be wrinkles here and there, mostly - and disturbingly - laugh lines. And he looked tired. There were dark bags under his eyes. He was a little less gaunt than she’d thought, but his skin was still pale and pulled tight. Still attractive, but less than he’d been at a distance. 

And, just like she’d thought she’d seen, his eyes were different colors. One as gray as the fog, the other a glittering hazel. Both had a tiny pinprick of a pupil, focused on her through the pain. 

She watched his expression go from dazed to shocked to real, horrible fury and then to a flat cold loathing in a matter of seconds, and then, to her surprise, he smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. She wondered if it ever had. 

“And so here we are again,” he said. “You keep doing this, I might think you _like_ me.” 

“Don’t delude yourself,” she snapped, gripping his mask like grim death. “I wanted to see you without being half-blinded by blood.” 

“Doesn’t help your case. Are you sure you don’t want to fuck? You could kiss me like this.” 

“No!” It was almost a yelp, and she clamped down on it, hard. He was snickering. Yui reached into the now-jumbled pile of thoughts she’d been ready to use against him and grabbed at the first thing she could reach. “Those eyes got you made fun of, didn’t they?” 

He stopped mid-snicker and stared at her, his smirk frozen. She plunged on. 

“In school? Kids got on your case about it? Called you a freak, I bet. Is that why you decided it was okay to kill people?” 

For a second he looked surprised, and then he _laughed_ , a real laugh, not just a nasty little chuckle. 

“Are you trying to _psychoanalyze_ me?” he asked, grinning wide. He locked his hands behind his head and gave her a look so condescending her fingers automatically curled tight against his mask. “ _You_ , of all people? Okay, let’s give it a try. See if you can figure anything else out. Yes, I got made fun of. But so did everybody else, for one thing or another. Didn’t leave a mark. Try again.” 

“Oh, I’m _sure_ ,” she growled. She’d expected disdain. Dismissal, even. But this was throwing her off as much as his sudden fake friendliness had. “Bet it didn’t get you many friends, either.” 

“Some people are capable of getting over little things like physical differences,” he said, with a sardonic edge that made her sneer. “I had friends. Or at least people who called me their friend.” 

“Yeah? You didn’t care about them? They must have picked up on that.” 

“You’d be surprised how often they didn’t.” He tilted his head back against his hands, his smirk as dangerous as ever. “Come on. You’re going for the low-hanging fruit. What’s next? Going to ask me if my dad smacked me around?” 

“Did he?” 

“Not enough to qualify for leaving permanent emotional scars that led to a life of excessive murder. Come _on_ , at least try to piss me off. That’s more interesting than playing federal investigator.” 

“He didn’t pay attention to you, then, did he?” she tried, scrambling for anything that might hit a mark, and saw his head tilt, his eyebrows lift just slightly. “You got ignored your whole life? Couldn’t get anyone to spend five minutes focusing on you, and now you spend all your time making sure the whole fucking world lives in terror of you?” 

For a few seconds he was silent, the grin fading _just_ enough that she knew she’d grazed a weak point - but when it came back in full force, it was clear that hadn’t been enough. 

“You might be on to something there.” There was a tinge of something like annoyance to his voice. “Hold onto it.” 

“So daddy didn’t give you all the attention you needed, and you grew up to buy a Halloween costume and start killing people. What a fucking life story.” 

“Oh, I didn’t always use this,” he said lightly, flexing against the leather and pointedly ignoring her jab. “All this was more recent. Even the mask. Before it was mostly just all black and whatever I could find to hide my face. That mask was a lucky find. A gas station I stopped in on my way south had a post-post Halloween clearance bin, and by chance I looked over and … well.” He grinned wider, baring a few teeth. “The rest is history.” 

The details were hiding. Most of the _story_ was hiding, buried away somewhere, and he was sliding past her attempts to get at it. Part of her didn’t want to know what the story was, but if she was going to find a weakness and rip it open, she had to get _something_. 

“How about your mother? Did she know you were a shithead from birth and ignore you because of it, or is she the reason that happened?” 

“Couldn’t say. She walked out when I was, oh, maybe three months old.” He shrugged, an awkward move with his position flat on the ground. “Or so I was told. Maybe she had your sixth sense for monsters.” 

“If she did, she would have smothered you before she left.” Yui watched his eyes narrow, but his grin didn’t so much as flicker. 

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” 

“Considering how many people would still be alive or not being tortured daily if it wasn’t for you, I think I’m justified.” 

“I’m sure there’s plenty of grieving families out there who’d agree with you.” She scrambled for a new thought in the jumble behind her eyes, and he raised an eyebrow again. “Is this why you were talking to Legion? Trying to find out about me so you could figure out my past and cure all my issues? That’s almost sweet.” 

“It’d take a direct meteor strike to cure all _your_ issues,” she snapped. “How the hell did you know I was talking to Legion?” 

“I saw your footprints around the lodge. They all wear sneakers. Only you’ve got heels.” 

“So do you.” 

“Sure, but I don’t wear women’s size … six and a half, is it?” 

“Seven,” she said automatically, then shook her head and shoved his mask and as much of her weight as she could down on his chest, hoping a few ribs would snap. “People don’t start killing for no reason, asshole!” 

“Wrong,” he said cheerfully, once he’d gotten his breath back. “Or maybe you’re right, now that I think about it. There’s always a reason. It’s just that sometimes that reason is because they want to. It just seems like a good idea. It feels _right_.” 

Yui tried to grasp at something in her head and felt everything slip away. This was going wrong. She was supposed to dig into his head, disgusting as the idea was, and find a weak point, drill into it until he gave up or killed her. Instead … she was getting _this_. 

“Then why the flashy getup? Why the _mask_? If you just wanted to kill, you could have done it in a potato sack and still gotten the thrill you wanted!” 

“Gotta give the media something to feast on,” he said airily. “The potato-sack killer sounds stupid. But the Ghost Face? Invisible until he strikes? Leaving victims slashed and torn in a pool of their own viscera, faces twisted in agony and terror, and without even a _trace_ of evidence left behind? Now _that’s_ a story everyone wants to hear.” 

His mismatched eyes gleamed as he talked, his smile as real as she’d ever seen one, his face almost glowing. It was horrifying. Legion had been right: Ghost Face was what he wanted to be, what he’d _become_ , and whoever he really was didn’t matter. Whatever his life had been like, how he’d grown up … they might have been nails in the coffin of his normalcy, but they were just cementing what had been there from the start. 

“So you grew up wanting to be a monster?” 

“Are you still on that?” His mouth twisted, but the gleam was still there in his eyes. “I didn’t grow up wanting to be anything in particular. This path just opened up for me, and I took it.” He shifted, hands sliding out from under his head to rest on his chest just inches from her own. “If you think you can find some terrible little secret in my past and use it to control me, Yui, you’re going to be very disappointed.” 

Somehow the use of her name shook her out of the shock that had kept her frozen. She sneered down at him, her resolve almost shattered. She just wanted get away from him now. Get away and get a weapon. 

“But don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” he murmured. “Trying to figure me out? You must really be obsessed with me.” 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she hissed. “You’re disgusting.” 

“And yet you’ve gone out of your way to find me.” 

“ _You’ve_ gone out of your way to try and make me do it.” 

“I figured you would if I involved someone else.” His smile turned into a smirk again. “I shouldn’t have blown the idea off so early on. You’re protective. A real defender of the weak. It’s a very visible character flaw, you know. Easy for someone like me to use against you.” 

The idea that he’d consider wanting to protect her friends a _weakness_ burned like acid. Yui clenched her teeth together hard against the stream of useless insults piling up in the back of her throat. 

What could she say? She could try to dig into his past again, try to pull out _something_ , but that would probably just annoy him more than it would piss him off. She could demand he stop, which wouldn’t end well. She could try to cut him a deal, but not only did the idea make her want to throw up, he’d probably ignore it anyway. And threatening him wasn’t going to go anywhere, because even without his knife he could still do a hell of a lot of damage - 

His mask felt cold in her hands, the plastic edges outside the softer fabric cutting into her fingers as her grip got tighter and tighter. 

“So that’s it?” she said, trying to keep her voice icy cold instead of shaky. “All that digging and you just don’t care?” 

“I don’t dwell on the past. It’s not very interesting up until I started killing.” His smirk was lazy, arrogant, and cruel. “I was never a nice guy. This place just lets me really be who I always was on the inside.” 

“I can tell.” There were probably more things she could say. More places to dig in, to wrench at, but she was already sick of being around him, both tired and feeling her gut want to heave. 

Yui shifted back on him, like she was getting ready to bolt, and saw him move his arms to push himself up. He dropped back instantly when she punched him as hard as she could manage in the groin. There was too much padding to make it a really effective hit, and it wasn’t right in the balls, but it stunned him long enough for her to jump up and back away - with his mask. 

He managed to roll to his feet without too much difficulty, half-crouched when he stood, but she saw his expression go from frustration to sudden deathly focus when he saw what she still had in her hands. 

“Here’s my offer,” she said. “You back off of everybody, you stop being such a fucking freak, or else I’ll throw this in the campfire.” 

“I can get a new one,” he said, but the look on his face was twisting so far from human it made her blood freeze. 

“Then do it.” She took a step back. He followed, slowly, intently; his hood had fallen back, his messy almost-black hair falling loose, just long enough to graze the sides of his face and make him look even paler. Rage had drained even the slightest color from him except in the one hazel eye. “You shouldn’t have fucked with my friends.” 

“You started this. Remember?” He started closing in; she kept backing up, not wanting to hit another tree but completely unwilling to take her eyes off him in case she blinked and he was on her. “You got my mask off in the first place. You saw what you shouldn’t have seen. I’m just doing what a _freak_ would do.” 

His voice was flat and dead. Cold, bottomless, promising to drag her into a pit with no end and leave her nothing but a smear of blood and a few splinters of bone on the way down to warn others about the danger they might fall into. Fear crawled up her spine, threatened to paralyze her, and suddenly she knew she wasn’t getting out of here with the mask. 

“You’re crazy,” she managed, the only thing that came to mind. “You want this back? Go get it!” 

Yui threw the mask as hard as she could. It frisbeed over his head, but she didn’t wait to see where it went, instead bolting in the opposite direction, back toward the asylum, willing to risk death at the Nurse’s hands if it meant getting away from him. 

She didn’t look back until she could see the fog swirling thick between the trees and saw him much further away than he should have been if he’d chased her. He had his mask on, and his knife in his hand. Things he valued just enough that even she wasn’t worth prioritizing. 

There was no point in sticking around now that she’d fucked things up so badly. Yui ran into the fog, leaving nothing behind except footprints.  
  


* * *

  
Ormond was freezing again, but that was fine. It meant the crystal clarity he wanted, and needed, right now. Danny lay on his back on the roof of the ski lodge and stared at the endless gray sky. 

Frank was in a trial, which meant that for once he was being left to his own devices by default. None of the others would bother him of their own volition. Susie was scared shitless by him. Joey was, too, unless the subject of weapons came up, but that didn’t happen so much these days. Julie _had_ heard him climb up there and followed to try and talk to him, but when he didn’t respond she left him alone. She’d always been the smartest out of the four of them. 

Things were not going well inside his head. They never did, at least as far as everybody else was concerned, but right now they weren’t going well in all the wrong ways. _She_ was foremost in his thoughts: her anger, her disgust, her fear … and where those had been satisfying before, now they were starting to crowd out everything else. The killing instinct was still there, obviously, but everything else was getting pushed aside. 

She’d gotten his mask off _again_. And harassed him about his fucking _past_ of all things, wringing information out of Legion to try and use against him. All of that was both infuriating and thrilling on its own, but she’d faced him down and asked him questions and he’d _answered_. Why? He knew why. He was a reporter, wasn’t he? When someone was faced with questions about themselves, a chance to talk about their life, they always plowed right ahead. Apparently even he wasn’t immune to it in a place like this, where consequences were so limited. 

He told himself it wasn’t important. She didn’t find anything useful. Not that there _was_ anything. Oh, sure, a trained psychiatrist might have been able to make a firm connection between his eventual showstopping atrocities and a fragmented, not particularly pleasant childhood, but that hadn’t set the stage. Hell, it had taught him valuable skills. Primarily that people wouldn’t pay attention to you if there was something else - _someone_ else - on their minds. 

But it stuck anyway. _She_ stuck, like a thorn in his side, like a rock at the mirror, sending new cracks spiderwebbing out from the place where it hit and refracting light in new and undesirable ways. 

It wasn’t the digging, or at least not exclusively. It wasn’t the fighting, or even the sex. He and Frank fought on a regular basis, and occasionally fucked when he could get around Frank’s internal terror of being bi, and he didn’t feel the urge to hunt _him_ down and bleed him like a ten-point buck during hunting season. He and Julie’d had their little trysts, and that hadn’t left him feeling like he needed to cut off half her skin just to hear her scream. And, of course, Amanda barely put up with him, insulted him on the regular, threatened him like he was another player in _her_ game, and only fucked him when he was willing to put up with her version of control, and he sure as hell wasn’t being pursued by thoughts of _her_ during his restless days. 

Frank’s burning desire to get under his skin and infuriate him, Julie’s perpetual fascination with him as a monster, Amanda’s perpetual disdain … those were fixations in their own way, more intent and determined than Yui’s, and yet. And _yet_. 

Was it because she was supposed to be a victim? Supposed to be _meat?_ Just another maggot, as their local trap-making lunatic would put it, that shouldn’t have been able to get around him like she had? It was the only explanation he could think of. 

The only time he’d felt even close to this before had been back in Roseville. It had been his third victim, a woman with a routine so regular he’d almost caught himself following it instead of his own, who on the night he’d been at her house with his knife in his hand had run out the front door, jumped in her car, and roared off down the street at twice the speed limit before he could so much as blink. He’d waited four hours for her to come back before leaving. 

Later on he found out her brother had been in an almost-fatal car accident, and she spent the next few weeks rotating between home and the hospital and her job, but never _consistently_. He’d been frustrated beyond belief. Blueballed, in essence, and the pressure and strain of _not killing her_ had built up so badly he actually took a day off of work to try and deal with it before he snapped in public. He might have been able to alleviate things somewhat by going after someone else - there was no shortage of victims in that shithole - but he couldn’t force himself to do it. He’d been ready to kill _her_. He _wanted_ to kill _her_ , and nobody else. 

When he finally did get around to it almost three weeks later it had been his most violent work up to that point. They found blood on the ceiling, the police reports said. He’d interviewed her family, written his article, and felt more relaxed and at peace than he had in years, the memory of her sliding into its place in the back of his mind, neatly settled away. 

That had to be it, he realized. He wasn’t focused on her because she fought back, or because she’d willingly fucked him. It was because she kept getting around him. She took back her headband. She took his mask, twice. She insulted him and dragged up his pointless past. And no matter how many times he killed her, she just … kept coming back, kept mocking him by being alive, and angry, and willing to take another stand against him. 

Danny could see his future now. It was horribly easy. 

He’d be like Michael - deranged, obsessed with one person, his whole world devoted to killing dispassionately until he could find _her_ , in which case everything else wouldn’t matter. No amount of trying to force himself to think differently was going to help. He couldn’t control the bloodlust in him, only how he let it out. Back in the world it had been whoever was most vulnerable. Here it was whoever he caught first. But now even that wouldn’t do. 

He’d be … predictable. Riddled with weaknesses like bulletholes. No longer the terrifying force of death and pain they all dreaded now but someone easy to get around. No self-control, no razor-sharp memory, no glint of a knife in the dark or a hint of his mask before sudden awful agony, just … just another killer that the Entity had rounded up and dumped on them. He didn’t have Michael’s bottomless hatred for the world that let him brush aside the Entity’s fury without so much as a wince; he’d turn into a _joke_. 

The mirror would be smashed, shattered pieces spinning crazily and reflecting light in all the wrong ways, no longer cold and calculated pieces of rational thought bent in new directions but totally random splinters he’d have to grab at wildly to use at all. 

No. He wasn’t going to become that. He wasn’t insane, at least by his own standards, and he wouldn’t let someone drive him to it just by existing. The other killers weren’t going to get a chance to look down on him without retribution because he was too busy planning his next attack on her and her alone. The little shits around the campfire were never, ever going to dismiss him out of hand. 

The clouds overhead swirled, the telltale sign of either the Entity acting up or someone coming back from a trial. Icy winds blew snow off the nearby trees but barely got through the leather of his coat. It wouldn’t have mattered if they did; he was already ice down to the bone. 

There was one simple, straightforward solution to his problem. A hell of a lot more difficult here than it had ever been before, but there was a way. There was always a way in the perpetual hollow cold of the fog. 

He’d have to kill her. 

Permanently.


	11. Chapter 11

The Entity, for once, gave her some time to rest and recuperate and try to pretend things weren’t going as badly as they actually were. She had a few trials, helped others after their own. Shared what she’d tried with Claudette to disapproval and worry and even a few laughs, and a little curiosity when she described what he looked like now that she had more details. 

But it must have been getting some real entertainment value out of the shitshow she and Ghost Face were putting on, because it didn’t take that long before it dumped her in another trial with him. 

He was on her, chasing her through the fractured almost-normality of a suburban neighborhood with too many sharp corners and low walls for him to hide behind. She vaulted a fence gate and heard him clamber over it after her; she ducked around the corner of a house and crouched behind a tall tree, or maybe it was a bush? She couldn’t tell. If she was lucky, he’d think she’d kept going and run right past her. 

There was silence for a while. Yui tried to catch her breath and waited. She glanced between the nearby porch railing and the tree-maybe-bush, but didn’t see him moving past, or even staring at her. She tried listening, but there were no footsteps and no warnings that he was anywhere nearby. Maybe she’d lost him? But that didn’t seem right, either. 

If someone else had caught his attention then she wouldn’t complain. Maybe that was it. Carefully, she crept forward and leaned around the nearby greenery, trying to see if he was heading her way or was just completely gone. 

“Not quite,” he said. 

Yui whirled around, tripped over her own ankle, and hit the ground. Ghost Face was leaning on the porch railing right behind where she’d been hiding. He must have cut through the house and seen her, she thought, managing to hide himself in the seconds before he got out there so she couldn’t hear him approach. 

“What the hell do you want?” she snarled. 

“Oh, you know. The usual. You running away, getting stabbed, screaming in pain and terror when I hook you … ” He shrugged. “Sounds kind of boring when I put it that way, doesn’t it?” 

“You think this is _boring?_ ” 

“Repetitive, then. Why don’t we spice things up a little?” He pushed away from the railing and strolled off the porch toward her. She forced herself to her feet and backed up, trying to keep enough distance that he couldn’t lunge and hit her too easily. “How about I hook you, and then when someone comes to rescue you, I’ll break every bone in their hands and cut out their eyes. Sound good?” 

“ _What?_ ” 

“Makes things more exciting, doesn’t it?” He faked a jump forward, making her stumble back to try and keep her distance; she almost hit the ground again, and he snickered. “It’ll keep them on their toes. Make them _edgy_.” 

“Fuck off,” she snarled. “You can’t just torture people for no reason around here.” 

“Bet you fifty bucks?” 

“If you’re still pissed off about last time, maybe it’s time you grew up and learned to get over it.” She glared at him, wondering if he could even see it through whatever filter his killer’s brain had layered over his vision. “Nobody cares what you look like under there.” 

“Great. That’s not the point.” He stalked toward her, moving slow and careful like a tarantula - sedate for now, but liable to strike without warning. 

“So what’s the fucking problem?” 

“It’d take too long to explain. You’ll have to come find me, when we’ve got more time.” The knife flickered in nearby lamplight, rising up to shoulder level again, his whole body tensing for a run. “And I think you _will_.” 

“As fucking if!” 

He ran at her, but she was already bolting. She heard the blade swipe the air behind her and took off, trying to get as much distance between them as possible. The lights of a finished generator lit up in the distance, and she swerved away from it; if he was going to follow her and her alone, the least she could do was keep him away from anyone else. 

The others had been hurt already, she knew. At least once or twice. Nobody hooked yet, or at least not that she’d run across. So far he’d been as normal as ever, but his threat was lodged in the back of her head like a splinter. What if he suddenly got worse? What if he wasn’t just taunting her? He’d hurt Tapp once already to lure her out; it wasn’t as if mindless, pointless torture was beneath him. 

Yui hurled herself over a pallet and dropped onto the grass. She heard him hit it full-on, then start bashing it to send it falling to pieces, but by that time she was already around another house and out of sight. Only then did she slow down and double back, this time through the house and up the stairs. 

It was so strange, being in a place with almost no furniture. It should have been lived-in, memories built into the walls; instead it was like a copy made by someone who’d never seen one, based on instructions written by someone who’d never lived in one. Too angular. Too mazelike. Too empty, and the never-ending repetition of the wallpaper got on her nerves. 

She made her way into one of the empty rooms at the back and crept inside one of the lockers, closing the door behind her silently. There was just enough space between the doors that she could see a sliver of the world outside, and as her head started to pound, she held her breath. 

The stairs creaked, then fell silent. She pressed herself against the back wall of the locker, hearing another generator start up again somewhere out in the darkness. Everything around her was still, almost suffocatingly so. 

Through the tiny crack in the doors she saw a figure in black and gray drift silently past her locker. There was barely a rustle of cloth as the straps around his arms floated and flicked in the air. How he could make himself _so quiet_ was a mystery to her, and one she didn’t want an answer to; knowing too much more about this place would drive her crazy. 

He paused just past her locker, looking out a nearby window. Yes, she thought, go through it. Drop down to the ground. Chase the shadow you can’t fucking see. Get lost and trip right into hell, you worthless piece of - 

The locker door crashed open and there he was, filling the whole world in front of her like a nightmare. 

“Nice try,” he hissed, and dragged her out by the hair. 

Yui yelped and tried to fight. But now, back in a trial, she was restricted; the most she could do was grab her hair close to her scalp and yank back to try and free herself. He pulled hard and threw her to the ground; her head cracked against the floorboards, stunning her for just long enough that he got a hand on her ankle and started dragging her down the stairs. 

“I didn’t think you were really the locker type,” he went on, voice almost normal but tense, too. “Hiding to try and throw me off? Get me onto your friends? And here I thought you weren’t a coward.” 

“I’m not!” she spat, fingers clawing at the banister as he pulled her to the main floor. 

“Actions speak a hell of a lot louder than words, sweetheart.” 

The diminutive stung her, _burned_ her, and she had a scathing insult lined up to hit him with when he finally picked her up. She hadn’t been able to get her hands on anything sharp enough to stab him with, but she could finally _hit_ him; her elbows dug into his spine as hard as she could manage, trying to weaken him, hurt him, or ideally shove a vertebrae out of place and send him to the ground. 

But there was a hook too close by. There always was on the street. A fine, delicate affair, made out of wrought iron, neatly capped on the top, and with two slabs of rusting bloody metal nailed to it to hold the hook itself in place. 

Ghost Face hefted her onto it as casually as ever. Once the explosion of light had cleared from her vision, she saw him still watching her from not nearly far enough away. 

“Okay,” he said, dark glee lacing his words, “let’s see who shows up first, hm?” 

He stepped to the side and crouched behind a nearby car - and vanished. She knew he was still there, though. His threat hadn’t escaped her for a second. He _would_ kill whoever came to rescue her. Or worse. 

Desperately she clawed at the hook, trying to free herself before anybody else could put themselves in danger. Either get off or die, avoid letting anybody else in range of his knife, try to resolve this all at once - 

She saw Jane come creeping around a fence, headed for her. Jane was dedicated, unflinching, and afraid of almost nothing; if she got close enough, she’d try to take the risk to save Yui even if she saw Ghost Face coming. And she wouldn’t know what was going to happen. 

Frantically Yui kicked out, shaking her head and pulling at the hook. Jane stopped, and Yui pointed at the car - directly where Ghost Face was hiding. She saw a very faint flicker of the eyes, a recognition of the danger, and a questioning look. 

“Just go,” Yui whispered against the pain, hoping Jane could hear it and, even more importantly, actually listen. “Get it done and run!” 

She could _see_ the indecision on Jane’s face, torn between the urge to listen to her given the current killer present and the constant, ever-present _obligation_ to get everyone out alive. Fortunately, the former won out, and she backed away down the street, back toward what was, at least for the moment, safety. 

Yui let out a sigh of relief, and then Ghost Face stood up and turned to her. 

“Very heroic.” His voice didn’t sound particularly cold or distant, but there was nothing else to it, either; it was flat, dead, disinterested. “Sacrificing yourself to save them a little pain. Maybe I was wrong about you and that locker. Just didn’t have the time to hit me with the door, huh?” 

“You threatened to break her hands,” she hissed. “That’s not a _little_ pain!” 

“Compared to what I’m going to do? It’s barely a mosquito bite.” He slowly approached her, each footstep clear as it hit the asphalt. “I’ve got plans, Yui. Things going on behind the scenes. Big things. Deals being made, sacrifices being thrown into the fire … the whole nine yards.” 

He stopped inches away from her. More than close enough to kick, but she was frozen, almost paralyzed by his words. 

“I’d love to tell you all about it, but that’d spoil the surprise, and I want you to be _completely_ shocked when you find out what I’m doing. It’s going to take a while, though. Things here … the Entity’s not willing to cut corners or do favors, even for someone like me.” 

“Who would?” she hissed. 

Suddenly his knife was in her face, less than an inch from her cheek. She would have flinched if she hadn’t been dangling from the hook. But it didn’t dig in. Didn’t hit her, even while she was totally helpless to dodge it. 

The straps on his coat were jerking his arm back. He was straining against the pull, but couldn’t break it. 

“Careful.” Instead of a deathly cold edge there was almost a lilt to his voice now, and somehow that was even worse. “I’m not all that stable these days. So, as I was saying … while I’m waiting for things to go my way, I’m going to make your life hell.” 

“How?” she demanded. “You can only kill me so many times.” 

Ghost Face hummed at that, almost like a laugh. 

“You’re right. So I’m not going to kill you. I told you last time - remember? I was wrong. You do care about your little friends. You feel it when they hurt.” 

“You stay the hell away from them.” 

“I’m going to find them,” he said, lowering his knife and leaning in closer. “If I can’t get my hands on you, I’m going to open them up like Christmas presents. You’re going to find their guts on every tree, and the best part is, I’ll do it so they take forever to die. I’ve picked up a few things around here. And if I find Claudette?” 

She froze. 

“If I get my hands on _her?_ I’m going to make what I did to the detective look like a papercut.” Somehow he managed to push in closer. “And it’ll all be for you.” 

Normally she would have cursed at him. Kicked out. Called him something, the nastiest thing she could imagine. 

But she’d spent too long dealing with him now, seeing him go from obsessed to _obsessed_ , seeing what he was willing to do in order to get to her, either her attention or her pain. This wasn’t a taunt. This was a _promise_. 

He ducked out of the way as the Entity’s claws suddenly shot down from above and ran her through, making her shriek in the sudden sharp pain that death by its hand always brought. She’d barely even noticed them. And now, as the world went black and the sky above swirled with orange stormlight, her last fragmented, terrorized thoughts were that she’d gone too far.  
  


* * *

  
Yui was halfway to the fog when Claudette caught up with her. 

“Wait! Where are you going?” 

“To get help.” 

“From who? Come back to the fire. We can figure this out. Whatever this is.” A hand caught her arm, and she couldn’t make herself pull away. “What happened?” 

“What do you think?” She felt Claudette’s hand tighten, and she shook her head. “Sorry. I just … I can’t let this keep going.” 

“It was him again?” 

“Yeah. But he’s getting worse.” 

“So tell me what happened.” 

She tried to get her thoughts in line. Part of her was convinced he was bluffing, or just trying to scare her, but now that she’d seen his face up close and personal for more than thirty seconds, seen the _look_ in his eyes when he talked, the rest of her was dead certain he was plotting something a hell of a lot worse than a couple nasty murders - and that she was going to have to deal with those murders first anyway. 

“He’s planning something,” she said, “but that’s not what I’m worried about. He threatened everyone again. Said he’s going to start killing them like he killed Tapp just to make sure I keep going to find him so he can do whatever it is he’s working on.” 

“And you can’t not go,” Claudette said. “What if you went to find him first? So he doesn’t feel like he has to.” 

“I don’t think that’ll stop him. That might piss him off more, actually.” Yui hesitated. “But he threatened you, too. Specifically you. Not to get me to find him, just to hurt you. And me.” 

Claudette was silent. Yui couldn’t make herself look at her, her lungs tight with the fear of condemnation, or accusation, or - just _her_ fear, honestly, knowing that it was her own damn fault for starting this in the first place. 

“How bad did he make it sound? Because I’ve been here long enough to get used to some really bad - ” 

“He said it’d make Tapp’s death look like a papercut.” Finally she turned, grabbing Claudette’s hand hard, trying to reassure herself she was right here, in one piece, safe for a given definition of safe. “I can’t let him do that. I _won’t_ let him do that. Not to anyone else and especially not to you.” 

They were far enough from the campfire that she couldn’t really see Claudette’s expression, but the flickers of light that came through the trees showed - no fear, maybe a little anxiety, more than a little resignation, and … a very faint smile, but a real one, too. 

“I know you won’t,” Claudette said, and the tightness in Yui’s chest loosened just a little. “But where do you think you can get help?” 

“I don’t know. I was just going to see where I ended up.” She looked back into the darkness, where somewhere out of sight, the fog lay waiting. “I need … something. Anything.” 

“Legion’s advice didn’t work?” 

“Not enough.” She glared at the darkness. “He didn’t care. If he got fucked up by a shitty childhood, it doesn’t bother him now. He’s too far gone. Maybe this place pushed him there and maybe he got there on his own, but … I need to do something else.” 

Claudette said nothing, letting Yui rack her brain for any other solution. It was hard enough to think as it was in the fog; burdened by a whole new problem like this one made it that much worse. 

“I can’t talk him around. There’s no pit I can throw him in to hold him off. I can’t hurt him like he can hurt me. Maybe ... ” She slid her arm out of Claudette’s grip and paced between the trees; she always thought better on the move. “Can I make some kind of offering to convince the Entity to kill him? You think the sky spider might listen?” 

“About killing one of its personal monsters instead of one of us? I doubt it.” 

“What did he do to get my hachimaki off me? What’s he doing _now?_ ” What did the killers do, when they needed to get something done? Lurked in their territories, biding their time until the next trial? But Ghost Face didn’t have a territory. He could be anywhere, doing anything. “How the hell do I get him off our backs?” 

“Maybe if you hit him hard enough he’ll get amnesia,” said Claudette, but without much enthusiasm. 

“I wish. If shattering his jaw didn’t do anything, I doubt another few hits will do much to dislodge the thought.” 

She stopped. 

“Did you think of something?” 

“Maybe you’re right,” she breathed, turning to Claudette. “Maybe he could forget. Maybe - this thing … it can control our minds, can’t it? Make us afraid of every trial? Running for our lives even though we should _know_ better by now? We don’t stay dead, so why do we always keep running?” 

“Because it hurts?” 

“But only for a while. Then we’re just - back at the campfire.” She stared without seeing. “It can keep us from fighting back and giving up, and you told me it can make _them_ kill. So why couldn’t it make him forget?” 

“Why would it want to?” Claudette approached her again, hand back on her arm, trying to keep her close. “He’s more dedicated than ever to killing us.” 

“No. He’s dedicated to _hurting_ us. He might want to kill me, but one out of four isn’t enough.” 

And … what little they knew was that the Entity only valued its killers more than them up to a certain point. If all four of them got out, it tended to be a while before they saw that killer again - and often not in a great state. Or a hell of a lot more murderous than before. 

If Ghost Face kept on prioritizing slow, agonizing kills over sacrifices, if he kept hurting without killing on a hook, the Entity wouldn’t let him go on with it forever, would it? There had to be a limit. Even for someone as dedicated to murder as he was, it wouldn’t just let him do anything he wanted. 

“Maybe there’s a way,” she said, more to herself than to Claudette. “Maybe I can convince it to kill him, or make it force him to forget what I did. If he can’t remember anything between me getting his mask off and now, he doesn’t have a reason to go after anybody. Or you.” 

“How? Yui, we can barely even get anything out of it as it is. All it does is _take_.” Claudette’s hold on her arm was so tight it was almost at the point of pain. “It’s not going to listen to you making any kind of demand, especially if it hurts one of the killers.” 

“What other choice do I have? You can’t stay out of a trial with him forever, and if he finds you - ” 

She couldn’t finish the sentence. Even the thought of it, her imagination running wild, made her want to throw up, to scream, to burn the forest down and kill everyone just to spite him. Claudette must have seen something of it in her eyes, because instead of trying to pull her back to the fire, she looked away. 

“I don’t want _you_ getting hurt just for this,” she said, quietly. Yui put her free hand on Claudette’s, squeezing her hand as tight as the grip on her arm. 

“He’s going to hurt me one way or another. If I can at least keep him from hurting us both, then it’s worth it.” Claudette said nothing, so she dug her fingers under Claudette’s, gripping her hand fully. “I’m just - I want to see if I can make it work. Someone out there must know something.” 

“But you’ll come back?” 

“As soon as I find something.” 

From the look she was getting, she knew that wasn’t a good enough answer, but Yui knew there was no other way. One of the other killers had to know something worthwhile. Or maybe there were other survivors out there who could help. She’d heard about someone they nicknamed _the Alchemist_ , a man who had left notes and tools, things that might help them one day. Maybe if she went far enough, tried hard enough, she could find him. 

Slowly, Claudette let her go. Their hands parted reluctantly, and Yui looked at her, partly illuminated by distant firelight, mostly shadowed. 

“I’ll be back soon,” she said. “I promise.”

* * *

She ended up in the wrecking yard again. 

Yui stared at the greenish fog around her, baffled. She’d fixed her mind on the idea of help as hard as she could - not on Ghost Face in particular, in case she wound up running into him too early and couldn’t get away from him in time, but on someone who could help her. Anyone. So why was she _here?_

Then again, she thought, Wraith had helped her last time - told her she was in trouble and directed her to the Legion. Maybe the Entity had misunderstood and sent her here based on that …

… or maybe it knew exactly where it was sending her. 

She picked her way through the metal mess and chaos until she saw Wraith in the distance, standing by the crumbling house that she’d run through and around a hundred, a thousand times by now. He stayed perfectly still until she stopped, and only then did he turn his head to fix his blank gaze on her. 

For a second she wondered if he was going to lash out and kill her, but eventually, as the silence and the cold built up between them, he spoke. 

“He’s still not here,” he said. 

“Good,” she replied. “I don’t want to find him. Not yet.” 

He looked at her. There wasn’t so much as a flicker of any kind of emotion on his face. 

“I need help,” she said. 

His head tilted. 

“He’s … getting obsessed,” she said, knowing it sounded stupid when talking to one of the people who knew exactly what that was like and probably enjoyed it, but she remembered Wraith’s parting words the last time she spoke to him. _I don’t like him much._ Maybe the idea of seeing him get his ass handed to him would keep her alive and get her what she needed. “Getting dangerous. More dangerous than anybody I’ve run into around here.” 

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” 

“No! Not like this,” she snapped. 

He didn’t respond. She glared, and then it faded as the silence dragged on. Her words tumbled into it, partly out of an urge to fill it and partly out of sheer unmanageable rage as she finally put the whole thing to the air. 

“He still wants to torture the others. He wants to kill them worse than he ever has, and he wants to do it to get back at _me_. And he’s planning something else, too, and I don’t know what that is, and I don’t want to know what it is but if I don’t find out, I can’t fucking stop him.” She paused to let the words sort themselves out. “He’s going to hurt Claudette and there’s nothing I can do to stop him except kill him.” 

“You can’t.” 

“I can try,” she snapped. 

“No,” he said, “you can’t. The Entity will never listen to a call for that. We are here to do its bidding, and only when we fail to live up to expectations are we discarded. Your desperation is nothing more than a fly on the windowsill. So long as he does his work, he’ll never really be in danger.” 

“He’s not doing the work! He’s just - ” 

“He’s doing enough.” Fog drifted up between them. “This path will lead you nowhere.” 

“Then - ” Yui bit the inside of her cheek hard, frustration making her want to attack but knowing that, help and understanding or not, Wraith would brain her where she stood. “Then I have to make him forget.” 

Wraith’s head tilted back the other direction. His face didn’t change, but he paused a long moment before he spoke. 

“Forget?” 

“What else can I do? If I can’t kill him, and trying to make him back off didn’t work, do I have _any_ other option?” She glared at him to no effect. “There has to be a way I can cut some kind of deal with the Entity to wipe his brain.” 

“Possibly,” said Wraith, after a long, thoughtful pause, “but that won’t work either.” 

“What? Why not? Doesn’t that thing control all of you?” 

“It corrals us. And it would be a simple matter to cut out one man’s memory. You might not even need to make a deal. But you will remember. And so will your friends. And so will we.” 

“So?” 

“What happens when someone brings it up?” His flat stare was starting to unnerve her. “When one of them lets slip that he once gutted them and he has no memory of it? When one of us makes a passing comment about a brutality he can’t remember enacting? He may be devoted to death, but he’s not so foolish as to brush those off. And when he learns what you’ve done, his vengeance will come twice as hard.” 

She stared at Wraith, her mind cold. Would he try to find out … ? Of course he would. Because he was almost compulsive about little details like that. A blank space in his memory that other people knew about but not him? He’d slaughter like wild until he got his answers. 

“To undo your mistakes and bring him back to his former lunacy, you will have to wipe _everyone’s_ memory. One man would be simple. So many will be hard. And it will cost you more than you may be willing to pay.” 

“There isn’t a price high enough for that,” she snapped. He almost raised an eyebrow at her. 

“You may find that you’re wrong,” he said dryly. “But then again … perhaps not. If you’re successful.” 

“So it can happen? I might be able to do it?” 

“The Entity is … capricious,” he said, as if picking the word very carefully. “If it believes your offering is worth more than one of its killers’ value or intent, it may favor you over them. And despite his nature, he’s only as successful as any of us. You’ve made him careless lately.” 

“Sounds like you know him more than you said you did.” His expression flickered again, toward disdain. 

“I know his type.” 

“Which is … not your type?” 

“No.” Wraith turned, suddenly looming; she had to fight every instinct in her body to not step back. “I was complicit, and deceived, and I bear my punishment for it as I must. _He_ was born ready to die, but couldn’t take the hint. Now two worlds have suffered for it.” The club made of so many little bones shifted in the rising fog. She couldn’t help but glance at it. “If I can’t see him thrown on the Entity’s terrible mercy, then maybe I can see him suffer a little.” 

Fighting among the killers, she thought distantly. Maybe, like Claudette had tried to tell her, like Legion had suggested, they didn’t all just want to kill. Maybe they had rivalries, their own hatreds. Maybe the darkness made flesh like Ghost Face offended the ones that had lashed out for revenge or out of real, driven insanity. 

She blinked the thought away and glared up at Wraith. 

“So you’ll help me?” 

“Not directly. I won’t place myself in his path, or the Entity’s, to save you.” He looked up, past her, into the distant fog and murk. “Find the Trapper. Tell him you seek the heart of this place. He will either take you there himself, or direct you elsewhere.” 

“The heart?” It sounded ominous enough. The center of this hellish, mazelike place - and he wanted her to ask _Trapper_ to get her there? “Why can’t you show me? Do you even know how to get there?” 

“I do. But the path he will take is more direct. And he is - more certain of it.” 

That sounded like an excuse. Yui narrowed her eyes, ready to argue more, but something in her made her keep her mouth shut. The memory of Claudette, still waiting for her, and the fact that this was _something_. 

She just had to hope it was more useful than the last piece of advice she’d gotten from him. 

“I’ll see what he says,” she said. “ … thanks.” 

He fixed his eyes back on her for a long few moments before turning away again, looking back toward the scattered cars, most of which she knew were empty in trials. Were they empty here, too? 

“Good luck,” he said, which surprised her as much as her own thanks had. 

“Don’t know how much good luck is _here_ ,” she muttered. “How to I find Trapper?” 

“The same way you found me.” 

She ground her teeth together, watched him for a few seconds longer, then turned and headed back toward the fog. It was a while before she found it, but it curled around her as familiar as ever, like it was getting used to her intrusions. 

In the silence of the wrecking yard, crows landed on the roof of the house and the empty cars nearby, fluttering their wings and watching Wraith in an unusual, curious silence.  


* * *

  
And somewhere else, in another trial, Danny took a flying leap off a balcony and landed on Dwight, sending him crashing to the ground with scream. 

“Hey there, Dwight,” he said, bright and jagged as a broken razorblade. “Mind if I borrow you for a few minutes?”


	12. Chapter 12

The conversation around the campfire had been dark before. It was even worse now. 

Yui could barely bring herself to tear her eyes away from the campfire. She’d tried to force herself to look at Dwight, but hadn’t managed it for more than half a second. Part of it was guilt. Part of it was anger. And part of it was the look David was giving her from his spot next to Dwight. 

He’d been one of her better defenders, to her surprise, right up until Nancy dragged Dwight back from a trial with an expression so haunted they knew something had gone terribly wrong. Now he’d fallen silent. Not accusing her, or at least not outwardly, but he wasn’t speaking up anymore. 

“So he’s trying to get at you again?” asked Meg, trying to keep things sensible instead of letting a fight break out. 

“I guess so,” Yui mumbled. 

“Have you figured out a way to stop him?” 

“Maybe.” 

“That gonna be enough?” asked Tapp, and Yui could hear the demand in his voice: _it had better be enough._ Normally she would have fought him for that. Now, she couldn’t even look up. 

“It will be,” Claudette said. She hadn’t moved from her spot by Yui’s side since Yui had come back, trying to figure out if chasing down the _Trapper_ , of all people, was worth it, and while her defense was comforting, it didn’t do much to help the black hole in her stomach. 

“Did he say anything about this before?” Jane asked. 

“He said he was going to try. He didn’t say _when_. I thought I had more time.” 

“So you knew this was coming.” David’s voice. She glared up at him, but it wasn’t a very strong one, and nothing compared to his flat, cold stare. 

“It could have been anybody,” she snapped. “He just said he was going to hurt people. He only threatened Claudette by name. I didn’t want this shit to happen to anyone.” 

“What else did he say?” Jane cut back in. “I saw you two talking after he hooked you. After you waved me away.” 

Something about her voice sounded suspicious. Yui turned her half-glare on her, seeing a trace of embarrassment but a decidedly intent look. She wanted answers. 

“That he wanted to hurt me,” she said, feeling cornered. “I wasn’t trying to cut you out of anything. If you’d gotten me off the hook, he was going to do _that_ to you! I had to keep you back!” 

“Even with everyone else still alive?” 

“He’s a murderer! Do you think he would have hesitated even if the Entity was trying to stop him?” 

“You wander off an awful lot,” Bill said suddenly, stopping Jane from whatever she was going to say next. “Looking for him. Talking to him. People keep getting hurt for you.” 

“I don’t _want_ that! I’m trying to stop him! If I have to go find him to keep him from doing that, I’m not just going to sit on my ass here waiting for it to happen again!” 

“Maybe you shouldn’t have gone the first time.” He tapped ash off the end of a cigarette that never seemed to shrink. “Maybe you’re getting too hooked into his crazy.” 

It wasn’t exactly an accusation, but her jaw dropped anyway. From the looks she was getting around the campfire, it was clear more than a few of the others were starting to think that way, too. 

Would they try to run her off, like she’d wondered about before? And this time of their own volition, without Ghost Face trying to manipulate them into it. She knew, at this point, that he wasn’t trying to play that kind of long con. He didn’t have the focus for it anymore. Not if he could force her to come to him so he could play his little game of instant gratification - 

“This isn’t her fault,” said Claudette, harder and colder than any of them had ever heard from her. 

Yui shut her mouth. Claudette was soft-spoken, and generally friendly, and didn’t argue much, and while she didn’t let people question her knowledge of the plants around the fog she didn’t tend to put up much of a fight about anything else. For her to put her foot down like that was like walking around a familiar hedge and running into a brick wall, or being bitten by a friendly dog. 

“I’m not saying it is.” Bill recovered first, without so much as stumbling. “But she’s got some responsibility for this.” 

“Maybe,” Claudette agreed, just as icy as before, “but throwing accusations around isn’t going to help. She’s not working with him to make this happen. None of us would do it. And neither will she.” 

“Sure as hell looks suspicious,” David said darkly. “And you’ve got a personal interest in keepin’ her safe.” 

“I do.” She put a hand on Yui’s knee, almost protective. “But I’d do the same for any of you. So stop this, _now_. We’re going to stop him.” She paused. “ _She’s_ going to stop him.” 

And there was so much certainty, so much dedication in those words that Yui wished she could live up to them. But despite what Wraith had said, she didn’t know if she actually could fix this, and stop Ghost Face from killing all of them. If it had been a different killer he was sending her to, like Huntress or hell, even Legion at this point, she might have been more confident. But Trapper? He _hated_ them. 

Still, it did the trick, and the mood around the campfire lightened somewhat. Even if they didn’t trust her, they trusted Claudette, who’d been here for too long and knew the score too well. 

As conversations started up again, she leaned a little more against Claudette. 

“Thanks,” she said, and felt Claudette sag against her. 

“Sorry. They just … I can’t believe anyone would even consider that you were deliberately causing this.” 

“I kind of am,” she admitted. “If I hadn’t started this, he wouldn’t have gone this far.” 

“It’s not your fault. It’s his.” 

“Yeah, but … I still should have thought a little. Nobody gets their masks off around here. Maybe there was a reason for that?” 

“I don’t think anybody’s ever really tried,” Claudette admitted. 

“Because they’d get killed for it. Or get someone else killed for it.” She sighed, feeling more tired than she’d ever been in her life. “I just … I have to get this done. I have to make him forget.” 

“Did you figure out a way?” 

“Maybe.” She looked at Dwight, who had snapped out of his funk and was trying to make the best of things, but she could see the haunted look in his eyes. He’d been here as long as Claudette; he was probably just as burned out, and getting slaughtered like _that_ probably didn’t help. 

They needed to stay alive. They needed to stay hopeful. They _didn’t_ need a whole new threat to cope with, because so far they’d only heard about one path out of here, and it wasn’t a good one. The longer they lasted, the better chance they had to find a real way out, a way back to the world they’d been stolen from. 

“Only maybe?” 

“I don’t know if it’ll work. I’ll just have to try it. See what happens.” 

“What is it?” 

Yui didn’t respond right away, and felt Claudette’s fingers tighten around her wrist. 

“How dangerous is it?” she asked. 

“Probably too dangerous. But that doesn’t matter.” 

“Yes it does.” The grip around her wrist got tighter. “If you get hurt doing this - ” 

“I can’t just wait for him to go too far. Again.” She turned her arm, sliding it so that her hand found Claudette’s. “I won’t let him hurt you.” 

“I can keep myself safe.” 

“No,” Yui said, feeling cold for a reason she didn’t want to name. “I don’t think you can. Not anymore.” 

They both fell silent for a while, until the fog came down and took Claudette away. Yui sighed, and put her head in her hands, and tried to think of how the hell she was going to convince the Entity or whatever controlled the fog to let her find one of the most dangerous, hateful, experienced, and pissed-off killers in the roster.  
  


* * *

  
She sat by the fire for a while, watching people be taken and stumble back, but nobody came back battered and haunted. Ghost Face wasn’t getting his trials, it seemed, and she was grateful for it. 

The conversations continued on and off. She saw the occasional glance in her direction. She ignored it, and tried to get her courage up, knowing that of the few times people had accidentally made their way into Trapper’s territory, they’d ended up violently dead. He covered the place in traps, they said. He didn’t listen to excuses. He barely talked. Only Jake had ever managed to come back in one piece, and even then, he said it was usually a close - or a very, very lucky - thing. 

But before she could make her way out there, she was pulled into a trial herself. It was sort of a relief - it took away her choice, forcing her to focus on something. And maybe it would give her a reason to go for it. Piss her off, build up her determination enough that she’d be willing to risk a shattered leg and death by decapitation to try and get this _finished_. 

It was the cold forest, the one with trees so close together it made her dread looking over her shoulder and high boulders, heavy foliage, a house being reclaimed by the forest itself. Something sharp stabbed at her gut as she looked around. She’d found him here, what felt like a million years ago, and … 

But there wasn’t time to think about that. Yui pushed into the darkness, past a thornbush that tried to cut through the leather of her jacket as she went, and crouched down by a generator to work. 

Minutes passed in silence, and then there was a sound in the distance that made her flinch - a _snap_ of metal, hard and sharp and able to smash through skin and bone. Normally she would have crouched lower into the shadow to make sure she wasn’t about to be seen, but this time her head jerked up as she looked around wildly. 

Maybe it was just random luck, or maybe the Entity was trying to hand her an opportunity; whatever the reason, the monster hunting her was the one she needed to find. 

Going to look for him was a bad idea. He wouldn’t listen, and if anyone saw her, they’d be twice as suspicious as before. But she could be reckless and stupid, which as some people liked to point out was about her regular behavior anyway, and that would get his attention just as easily. She could stalk him. Pull people off hooks. Get in his way to block a fatal blow. Find his traps and set them off without getting caught. Sabotaging them - 

They’d learned their lesson there. It wasn’t an option anymore. And that would probably piss him off too much to listen. 

She focused on the generator in front of her. Steve crept up next to her with a nod and set to work with her. They heard another _snap_ in the distance, but this one was followed by a distant yell of pain. Someone caught? Or just trying to shut the trap while he was still too close by? 

They finished the generator and ran for it. She headed for the source of the scream, and was just in time to see him drop Bill on a hook. She glared, and hesitated - the gleam of the metal running through him and the blood dripping off his cleaver was never a sight that inspired much courage - but as soon as he was a few steps away she rushed up and dragged Bill off. 

“You stupid - ” 

“Just run!” she snarled, and faced Trapper as he turned sharply to see just who’d been ballsy enough to save someone right under his nose. 

She thought she’d ask him here and now. Get his attention, and then get an answer. But the carved mask, the bloody weapon, the feeling of _murder_ she got from him just by seeing him turn toward her - it all added up in a hurry, making her gut clench, her heart skip a beat, her whole body freeze up for a full, valuable second. 

The Entity could force them to fear something that should have held no terrors by now. 

She jerked to the side and took off as the blade came down; it missed her by a matter of inches. Now she had his attention. The only question was how to get him to stop trying to kill her long enough for her to try and talk to him. 

Yui ran, dodging around trees and rocks, stumbling over exposed roots and dips in the dirt. She could hear him following her, the heartbeat that wasn’t hers pounding in her head, deafening her to everything but the sound of his footsteps slowly catching up. If she stopped now, would he be surprised enough to do the same? Or would he just cut her down on the spot? 

She put her money on the second, and tried to slow him down by hurling herself over a half wall. 

Right into a bear trap. 

Like being hooked, the pain of a trap never really got better, no matter how often the others claimed it did. The force of the springs and the sharpness of the teeth were unbelievable. The pain tore through her, stopping her, making her shriek even while she tried to bite back against it. 

This one was almost black with something slick, making it hard to see and harder to grab. She tried anyway. Desperation made her scrabble at it to get a grip, but the jaws were too strong, and the teeth cut into her fingers, and then he was rounding the corner to grab her by the back of the neck and pull her up. 

One foot on the trap itself and the jaws opened easily, letting him pull her up and out of it and over his shoulder in one fluid movement. She fought back, instinct overriding intelligence and pain, trying to get herself free even while her leg dangled uselessly, bleeding onto his already-bloody leather overalls. 

The hook tore through her shoulder as easily as the trap had gotten her. She tried to brace herself so she could recover faster. It almost worked. By the time she could see again, he was already turning away, heading for whoever was next on his shitlist. 

Yui tried to speak, choked, took a hard breath and tried again. 

“Wait! I need - to talk to you!” 

He didn’t even glance back. She kicked at the air with her good leg, as if she could somehow pull him back. How to stop him? This was her best chance. It might have been her _only_ chance.

“I need to find the heart!” she managed, and saw him stop dead. “The Wraith told me to ask you. I have to get - to the heart of this place.” 

Slowly, he turned, the cracked and grinning mask staring at her with its same unnerving, mocking expression. But underneath there must have been something else. Surprise? Shock? Disbelief? More anger that she was trying something this stupid? 

There were a few seconds of thought, and then he approached her, getting in just close enough to make her wish she hadn’t stopped him. 

“Are you insane?” he demanded, and it almost surprised her into silence. She’d never heard him talk before. Grunt, sure. Snarl. Huff. Swear when they hit him with something. But never full sentences. Then again, she hadn’t heard Wraith talk before, either, and that had surprised her, too. They weren’t _just_ monsters, she thought. There was something human in all of them. Or at least, there had been, once. 

“I need to try and fix what I started.” The pain made talking difficult. She fought through it. “I have to - find a way to stop Ghost Face. Wraith said you can - show me how to get there.” 

And he hadn’t said much else. No instructions, no help … maybe she had to find out when she got there. It sounded about right for this place. 

Trapper glared at her for a long few moments. It was almost too dark to see even what little of his face was visible under the mask, but she was close enough that there was a shadow of a mouth under the carved-out hole above it, twisted in a grimace. 

His free hand came up, but instead of grabbing her he reached into a pocket on his overalls and produced a keyring lined with rusted keys. Without letting go of his cleaver, he pulled one free and jammed it in her jacket pocket. 

“Follow it,” he snarled. “If you get out alive. It’ll let you find me.” 

And then he was gone, leaving her to her shock and pain and suddenly renewed hope. That key had to be the way to find him. No walking into the fog and hoping, no random guesses, no looking for directions - follow it, and find him. And find her path. And _stop Ghost Face_. 

The sudden rush of adrenaline might have lasted a little longer if, just seconds after Trapper disappeared, Claudette hadn’t crept around a nearby corner and headed for her, wearing an expression of frightened dread. 

Yui didn’t need to ask if she’d heard anything. 

“You’re asking _him_ for help?” Claudette hissed after pulling her down. 

“I had to!” Yui grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the hook, back into the mist and trees. “I found Wraith and he told me to find him. This was my best chance. And it might work!” 

“Yui, this could be a trap!” They crouched down and Claudette popped open her medkit, pulling out gauze and bandages to try and stop the bleeding if nothing else. “They could be running you right into Ghost Face!” 

“You’ve told me about him. He doesn’t go for traps that aren’t metal.” And the stories she’d heard … Trapper was a very direct monster. If he was going to run them into a trap, it happened out of panic and fear and not paying attention; his mind games were short-term, and for him alone. If he wanted them dead, they were dead - most of the time. 

“Then this might be the one time he does,” Claudette insisted, wrapping her up almost frantically. “He doesn’t help us. He hates us! You know what he can do!” 

“I don’t have a choice! Nobody else is going to help me. I’ll take any chance if it means getting that asshole off my back and away from you!” 

Claudette put a hand against her mouth suddenly, silencing her. She could hear a faint heartbeat in her head, and a glance around the trees revealed the hulking, metal-punctured silhouette of their current hunter. 

Still on-edge and in pain, but with her shoulder wrapped up and Claudette no longer trying to argue with her, Yui crept away from her spot to try and find a less dangerous place to be. It took her a minute to realize Claudette wasn’t following her. For a second she felt more alone than ever - 

Trapper turned and lunged at someone, his blade hitting a tree and sending splinters of wood flying. She watch a dark figure vanish into the distant mists, a medkit grasped in one fiercely-clenched hand. 

She’d explain it all when the trial was over. And they’d both get out alive. Yui tried to swear that to herself, pushed herself up, and headed for the nearest generator, where Steve was pulling at wires hopefully.  
  


* * *

  
The trial went - it went. She didn’t want to get killed, because despite giving her the key Trapper made it clear he wasn’t about to spare her. He took her down with a series of blows that left her back shredded and bloody and hooked her again. This time it was Bill who found her and took her down without a word. Maybe getting in the way of him and Trapper had helped; maybe it hadn’t. 

She finished generators. Tried to save people. But she was focused on Claudette, on getting _her_ out alive, and in the process both Bill and Steve ended up dead. Yui pulled Claudette out the exit gate as they watched Trapper close in on them, and only glanced back once they were safe to see him standing at the exit, watching them run. 

Neither one of them spoke until the fog pulled away from them and the darkness outside the campfire closed in again. Then, their wounds healed and their clothes mostly back in one piece, Claudette turned to her. 

“You should have helped them.” 

“I wasn’t going to let you die in there.” 

“I’m used to dying because of him.” 

“So what? I’m sick of seeing you get hurt.” 

There was silence. They walked toward the light, seeing Bill and Steve already back, seeing the others talking. Yui wondered if they were talking about her. If either of them had heard her and Trapper like Claudette had. 

It was Claudette who stopped her just far enough from the light that they wouldn’t be overheard. She looked at Yui for a few long moments, then shook her head. 

“You’re really going to go find him?” she asked, sounding more resigned than anything else. 

“He might be able to help me.” 

“Legion couldn’t.” 

“But they tried. And - they probably could have done more, if I’d known he was such a self-centered prick.” She looked down at her boots, at the way they were completely clean and free of blood. No rips, no tears, no signs that she’d ever stepped in a bear trap. “This … might actually do something.” 

“What is it? What did he give you?” 

“A key. That’s not part of it, it’s just a way to find him.” She tugged it out of her pocket. It was an old, rusted thing, the end partly broken and so completely useless, but it was his. It would lead right to him. “When I talked to Wraith, he told me to find ‘the heart of this place’, and that Trapper could get me there more easily than he could.” 

“The heart?” She heard confusion edged by dread. “I don’t know if this place _has_ a heart.” 

“Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that’s just what it’s called.” 

“But … ” Claudette hesitated as Yui put the key back. “Look - a while back, when there were only a few of us, we were finding hints about what made this place what it is. Some notes, some books … Jake found a lot when he was looking for tools, and most of it didn’t make any sense, but they said there was something outside all this. Or maybe inside it, or around it, or … ” She shook her head. “In the notes, it was called the void. And all the descriptions of it weren’t good.” 

“He didn’t say anything about a void.” 

“I can’t think of anywhere else the _heart_ of this place would be.” Claudette stopped again. “It’s … it sounded bad. Like a storm, all the time, with people in it. Hard to find and impossible to get out of.” 

“If it’s a void, there can’t be anything in it.” Yui reached out to take Claudette’s hand. “If I was supposed to find that, then he would have said it.” 

But Claudette pulled her hand away before Yui could reach it. 

“I don’t want you to go,” she said, and there was an edge of desperation in her voice that stopped Yui from reaching out again. “Even if Trapper doesn’t kill you, even if this might keep Ghost Face off us, I don’t want you taking that kind of risk! Something at the center of this place is probably really dangerous, and if it’s anywhere near the Entity - what if something happens to you? What if it tries to kill you itself?” 

“I’m not going to let it,” Yui tried to say, but Claudette only shook her head. 

“You can’t stop it! I’ve been here too long, I’ve seen way too many things - I swear there used to be other people here, but I can’t remember their names, or even what they looked like. This thing is too powerful. And if the only way to get Ghost Face off us is to cut a deal with it, then I don’t - I can’t - ” 

She dropped her medkit and grabbed Yui’s hand, dragging her in closer. 

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said, and it was almost a whisper. 

Yui tried to say something, but all the words were stuck in her throat. She couldn’t get a single one out. It was the first time in her life it had happened. 

“Don’t go.” It was almost begging. In the faint distant firelight, she could see Claudette’s expression, and it cut like a knife straight down to the heart. “We can find another way.” 

She wanted to say _okay_. She wanted to let Claudette lead her back to the campfire, wanted to sit down, wanted to pretend none of this was happening and that they could find a way to thwart a psychopath without having to deal with a possibly literal devil. But she knew, somewhere in the back of her head, that unless she took this path, nothing was going to change. 

Ghost Face _would_ attack someone. He _would_ go after Claudette, and then do to Yui whatever it was he was planning. All the insults in the world wouldn’t stop him, and somehow, she didn’t think he’d take to being bribed very well. 

“No,” she said, slowly and carefully, “we can’t. I’ve tried other things. I tried talking. I tried fighting. None of that worked. We don’t have anywhere else to go, and they have too much power. I started this, Claudette. I have to end it. Even if it means taking a risk with Trapper and making a deal with the Entity.” 

She felt Claudette’s hands tighten around hers to the point of pain. 

“You’ll get hurt.” 

“Maybe. Maybe not. But if I don’t, _you’ll_ get hurt. I don’t want to say I know that for sure, but I have to. He’s already done too much. I can’t let him go after you.” Yui’s voice hardened, edged with the anger this place built up in her from second to second. “I won’t let him lay so much as a _finger_ on you.” 

For a second she thought Claudette was going to keep arguing. Then Claudette rushed in, hands still caught around hers, and kissed her. 

It caught Yui off-guard. She froze. The kiss was hard and desperate and inexpert, barely more than their lips pressed together. It was over just as quickly as it had started, Claudette suddenly pulling back, looking shocked at herself. Embarrassed, almost afraid - of rejection, maybe, but after everything they’d done so far, the idea was so far off Yui’s radar it might as well have been back in the real world. 

There was silence, and then she reached out with her free hand and dragged Claudette back in for another kiss. 

This one went on longer. It was just as desperate but a lot less uncertain. Yui had experience where Claudette didn’t, and she tried to coax her, to show her without having to tell her what to do. Returning it seemed to help, and after a few seconds of awkwardness it was a real kiss, harder, hungry for something neither of them could get from anyone else in their shared nightmare. 

She pulled her hand free from Claudette’s and locked one at her hip and one at her jaw, keeping her close. Claudette’s hands landed on her waist, holding on tight, fingers curling against her belt. Yui pushed her back until she hit a tree and pressed hard against her, and felt Claudette shift to meet her. They broke the kiss, started it again, and while it went on the fog didn’t exist. The whole world didn’t exist. There was no campfire, no killers, no fear and pain and desperation to survive. It was just the two of them, and nothing was going to get between them even if it killed them both. 

They did separate, eventually. Or at least, they stopped kissing. 

“You should have done that forever ago,” Yui said, resting her hand on Claudette’s shoulder. 

“I wasn’t sure if I should,” Claudette said, a little shakily but for once out of something that wasn’t pain or terror. “I didn’t know if … you know.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Yui laughed. She didn’t want to let go. Didn’t want to let this moment slip away. Neither did Claudette, apparently; her grip was as tight as ever, as if trying to reassure herself that Yui was right there and wasn’t planning on walking straight into hell to try and stop a monster from killing them. “But around here - why not?” 

“Just got too busy being worried, I guess.” She pressed her forehead against Yui’s shoulder and sighed. “You’re really going to do this?” 

And now the world was back. Of course, nothing could last forever … except this nightmare hellscape, evidently. 

“Yeah. There has to be a way to do it, and keep everyone safe from him.” She paused. “Safe from what he’s doing now, anyway.” 

“Then promise me you’ll come back.” The grip around her waist tightened, trying to hold her still. “That if you think something really bad is about to happen, you’ll turn around and walk away.” 

Could she do that? If she saw the opportunity ahead of her, and it meant she’d die in the process … would she be able to back off? Most of her was saying yes, but a part of her, the part that screamed with hate and rage against everything she’d had to put up with until now, was saying no. That dying was better than suffering here, that denying Ghost Face her life was worth the cost. 

Even that part wanted to live, but if the alternative was waiting in crippling dread for the worst to happen, then death would be the only option. True death. Real death. 

“Promise me,” Claudette repeated, still with her face to Yui’s shoulder. 

But would the Entity kill her? Would it let one of its victims escape just to spite a killer? It didn’t seem likely. So could she come back? Would she? 

“I promise,” she said. “That I’ll come back. I mean, I have to get my hachimaki back once he’s not going to try and take it off me again, remember?” 

She felt Claudette relax against her. Words were cheap here, but it was about the best they could do, and she’d put as much absolute sincerity into her words as she could drag out of herself under the circumstances. Claudette pulled back a little and smiled, still looking afraid but a hell of a lot less so than before. 

“Yeah. I’ve still got it.” She reached up and touched the place where, under her sleeve, she’d tied the hachimaki flat so nobody could tell she was wearing it and try to rip it away from her. “When this is over and done with, I’ll give it back to you.” 

“Or you can wear it over your shirt. Won’t matter if he sees it.” Yui smirked a little. “Or anybody else.” 

Claudette held back a laugh and finally, reluctantly, they parted, though their hands touched for another long second before letting go. Yui turned to look into the darkness around them. The fog was everywhere, and if she was lucky, it would take her where she needed to go - and if it wouldn’t, she had a way to force it. Or at least that’s what she hoped. 

“Be careful around him,” Claudette warned. “He’s bad enough in trials. Everything I’ve heard says he’s even worse outside them.” 

“If he’s willing to give me a chance, maybe he can stop himself from killing me long enough to help.” It sounded ridiculous when she said it out loud, but there was no other way to think. He had to help her. He _had_ to. “Maybe he hates Ghost Face more than he hates us.” 

“That’d be nice.” Claudette took a step away from the tree, then hesitated. “What do you want me to tell the others?” 

“Tell them I’m ending things.” 

There was a long silence before Claudette finally left her alone in the darkness. Once she was sure she was completely alone and not being watched, Yui let out a shaky sigh that seconds ago had been a scream trying to form. 

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the key. Rust flaked off against her fingers as she turned it over in her hand, trying to see any kind of identifying marks that might tell her something about the monster she was about to meet, but it was so old and worn that if anything had ever been visible it was gone now. 

Yui set her shoulders, turned, and walked into the darkness.


	13. Chapter 13

The fog swirled away from her a lot faster than it ever had before, leaving Yui in a world cut by cold moonlight and blue shadows. 

Off to one side she could see the looming, crumbling coal tower, and all around her were dying trees. Underfoot the uneven dirt and dry grass were as familiar as ever, and even as she glanced around, she could see a bear trap not quite hidden by a tree, a clear warning to anyone who set foot in this place of just who they were fucking with. 

She looked down at the key in her hand. It lay as cold and still as ever. She hadn’t felt anything walking through the fog, but apparently it had done the trick. Now that she’d found her way here, she just had to find _him_. Without getting trapped in the process. 

Cautiously, Yui made her way through the trees, looking down more than up. He had to be somewhere nearby. He’d be expecting her, for one. And he probably wanted the key back. Unless he’d been taken away to another trial so soon, it couldn’t be that hard to find him. 

It took her a while before she saw something that looked like a path in the dirt. Nothing solid or serious, but there were prints in it, leading in two directions, and the grass looked more worn down than the rest. She peered through the trees and saw - something. Something strange and unfamiliar, which in a place as darkly familiar as this one was enough to get her moving in a hurry. 

It turned out to be a house she’d never seen before. Maybe a trial ground they hadn’t had a chance to suffer on yet? But something told her no. It was too big, dominating the center of the clearing it was built in. As she got closer it looked like it wasn’t falling apart as much as the rest of the grounds she’d seen. It still looked like shit - broken and boarded-up windows, smashed siding, huge holes in the roof and half the tiling missing everywhere else - but it was holding itself together. Something - or some _one_ \- was deliberately keeping the place upright. 

And she could see him from the edge of the clearing, standing on the porch, leaning against one of the walls. When he saw her he paused for a long moment before pushing away and heading toward her. 

She felt her heart start to pound and sweat form on her temples. This was his place. His territory. Here was something none of them had ever seen before, which meant it was private, and if she’d learned anything during this whole fucking debacle it was that the killers valued their privacy. And he was a dangerous, pissed-off killer, one who was brutal by default, who had no problem gutting anybody who escaped a trial against him alive - which she’d just done. 

Even out here he loomed, the moonlight glinting off the metal in his shoulder and casting eerie shadows on the cracked white bone of his mask. Every step made his arm swing, and with it the huge, bloody cleaver he wielded, too burned and covered in blood to glint. It took everything in her not to back up and run. 

Trapper stopped two feet from her and held out his hand. She stared, then reached out and dropped the key into his palm. 

“Found your way, huh,” he said, voice low and rumbling as he pulled out the keyring again. 

“I guess it worked.” She watched him slide the key back on and looked up at his mask, trying to set her face in a hard flat look and hoping that’s what was actually happening. “So … where do I go?” 

“You got any idea how dangerous what you’re planning is?” he asked. 

“Some.” She wasn’t about to say _no_ to a question like that; he’d probably detail it, or demonstrate on the spot. “But it doesn’t matter. I need to stop him, no matter what happens to me.” 

“The Entity doesn’t play fair.” 

“Of course it doesn’t,” she snapped, and froze when she saw him shift his blade. “But I still have to do it.” 

He looked at her for a long, long moment, like he was trying to decide whether to actually help her or just kill her for being so stupid. She glared back, waiting for his decision, knowing if she ran she wouldn’t get five steps before she hit a trap. 

“You’re gonna regret this.” He turned and gestured for her to follow. “Follow me.” 

Relief and anxiety bubbled through her as she tried to keep up with him; she had to take two steps for every one of his, but at least he wasn’t moving very fast. 

“I didn’t think you’d actually help me.” 

“Wasn’t going to,” he said dryly, taking a long step that turned out to be over a bear trap. Yui, just to his side, had to jump to avoid it. “But if it’s that snide little shit in question, I figure it might be worth the hassle.” 

“You don’t like him either, huh?” 

“Nobody does.” Trapper flicked his cleaver deliberately, slicing at an invisible black coat in the air. “He’s an arrogant piece of shit. No respect for anybody. Got a sadistic streak a mile wide, too.” 

“This is you saying it?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “After how badly you fucked up Jake?” 

“Yeah. I am,” he snarled. “Should tell you something.” His voice moved back into something more normal. “ _He_ would’ve been fine if he hadn’t busted my traps and taught the rest of you to do the same. He more than deserved what he got.” 

“Like hell he did,” she snapped. “Getting around you fuckers is what we’re supposed to do.” 

“Not like that,” he said, and stepped around an otherwise normal spot in the grass; she glanced down, saw a trap so well hidden she almost tripped into it, and followed suit. 

“But dropping the hooks is just fine?” 

“Those aren’t mine.” 

There was silence for a little while. Yui tried not to dwell on what had happened and focus on what _might_ happen, but she knew Trapper was capable of things almost as nasty as what Ghost Face was doing. But, for as much as she’d been horrified by finding out what he’d done, there was a world of difference between deliberately destroying the traps he used in every trial and just getting his mask off. 

“So what’s the ‘heart’, anyway?” she asked, trying to shake the memory free. 

“You’ll find out,” he said enigmatically. Yui scowled. 

“Is that supposed to shut me up, or is it just that you don’t know what it is and you want to cover for it?” 

“Supposed to keep you from asking stupid questions.” 

They crossed the cleared space around the house and went into the trees. Where he stepped aside, she followed; where he went around a tree, she went the same way. The traps were in all the worst places, some easy to see and others next to impossible to catch sight of until she was almost on top of them. 

“Why put so many out? Isn’t this place safe?” 

“Safe’s not the problem. There’s nothing more dangerous around here than me. I don’t like trespassers.” 

Yui would have disagreed - brutal as he was, she got the feeling some of the other killers were probably a bigger threat than him given half a chance, particularly the ones with the chainsaws - but something in her knew that taunting a killer wasn’t in her best interests right now. 

There was fog between the trees again, the solid wall that she’d gotten too familiar with. He stopped by a part of it that didn’t look any different from the rest and stared into it. Yui peered in, trying to see what made it special. 

“Through here,” he said. “Walk straight ahead. Don’t turn, don’t get off-course. Just keep going. Do that, eventually you’ll see a light. Follow that. Should take you where you want to go.” 

“That’s all?” 

“Get lost and you’ll never get out.” 

“Oh.” She glared into the endless gray. “And I’m looking for … ?” 

“You’ll know.” 

That seemed like it was as much as she was going to get. Going in, totally blind, maybe even stepping into a trap that would kill her for good or worse … but she had to hope that Wraith hadn’t been lying to her, that Trapper wasn’t just being vengeful, that the Entity would understand what she was trying to do and _help her_. It couldn’t just let one of its killers do whatever he wanted out of stupid petty vengeance. Could it? 

“Word of advice?” Trapper said, and she turned to look at him. He was watching her, mask fixed on her face, the expression underneath it unreadable but his tone almost - but not exactly - normal. 

“What?” 

“Don’t look down.” 

She stared at him, wondering what the hell he could possibly mean by that, but she knew she wasn’t going to get an explanation. Instead she looked back into the fog, trying to steel herself for whatever might come next, feeling too cold and fighting the fear welling up inside her. 

Without any other way to go, Yui stepped into the fog one more time.  
  


* * *

  
It was quiet. Almost silent. She couldn’t hear any of the little sounds she’d heard before - no fighting, no animals, no voices, not even ones raised in a scream. The only thing at the edge of hearing was a distant rumbling that, as she walked, sounded like it was getting louder. Like a thunderstorm, she thought numbly. Miles and miles away but still loud enough to be heard and seen. 

After a while there was wind, starting like a gentle breeze at first but quickly turning into something harder, sharp and cutting right through her clothes to her skin. She had no choice but to look down to keep it out of her eyes so she could keep walking straight, and underfoot all she saw was dirt. Just dirt, not even blood or the hellish glowing cracks that tore through the trial grounds as soon as the doors opened. 

She glanced up from time to time when she could, but it got bad enough that she finally had to yank her goggles down so she didn’t lose track of where she was. The wind was trying to push her off course, making her trip and stumble, and she hoped like hell she was still going straight ahead. She’d made a promise. She was getting back. She couldn’t get lost out here, she just _couldn’t_. 

The terror of that welled up in her, making her skin prickle and her lungs pull tight. She wanted to turn around, wanted to run back, wanted to abandon all this and get back to the campfire. To be in a safe place, _the_ safe place, without anything that could hurt her. With no fear of being trapped in an endless place forever, with no sight and no sound and no time. 

Her legs hurt with the urge as she fought against the wind. Everything in her wanted more and more to go back. To go back. Go back. Go back go back _go back go back go back_ \- 

And then, in the distance, she saw a light. 

Now she ran. The wind pushed her back, but she had a goal. She _wasn’t_ lost! She wasn’t going to stay lost out here. She was going to get to the heart of this place, and find whatever it was she could, even if it was the Entity itself, and she was going to grab it by the metaphorical balls and make it give her a way to fight back against Ghost Face. To make him forget. 

Maybe it would let her kill him for good, she thought wildly as the light spread out, getting wider if not brighter. Would it? Throw down one of its own in order to help her? Probably not, but if she was out here, if she’d gotten this far, then maybe she could - 

The light spread out and flattened, and suddenly the fog pulled away and she was looking at a horizon. Gray clouds, or maybe just more fog, above her, with an unsettlingly familiar orange light in the distance, like the light of a sunset just after the sun had sunk out of view. 

The fog lingered when she looked left and right. It had always been a wall before but now it was a wall that extended to the sky, going on forever, turning into the fog-clouds above. Yui pushed her goggles back up and looked around, trying to get her bearings. 

She was standing on dusty gray ground that stretched on for a while and then dropped off suddenly. She could see a mist in the distance, flickering with what looked like orange lightning, but more importantly was the pillar of stone jutting up from below just past the edge of the cliff. 

There was something on it. She couldn’t quite tell what it was. It was white, and squarish - maybe a pedestal or something - and on top of it was something black and misty. 

There was a bridge connecting the cliff to the pillar. It was nothing more than two thick ropes strung through a series of planks. There were no handrails. It swung in occasional gusts of wind. 

She stared at it for a long time without moving. This was a test. She knew it was a test. The Entity had allowed her to get here, and now it wanted to make sure she was willing to go through with it. Maybe there was still a way back through the fog, but … somehow, she didn’t think so. 

This was it. Cross the bridge, find whatever was on the other side, or … she didn’t want to think about what would happen if she fell off. 

Slowly, Yui approached the bridge. She almost glanced down off the edge of the cliff when Trapper’s warning shot back through her skull like one of his traps around her leg. She stared at the distant pillar, at the thing on top of it, and tried to focus every inch of her body on getting to it no matter how badly her bones wanted to turn and run. 

She stepped onto the first plank. 

Every step was careful. She tried not to put too much weight on either foot, but the planks were just far enough apart that she couldn’t shuffle along without risking falling. She kept her arms out to keep her balance, eyes fixed on the pedestal ahead of her so intently they started to water. There was still wind, but it wasn’t as bad now. It wasn’t, for example, trying to deliberately shove her off the bridge. 

There was still no sound but the rumbling, directly overhead but still distant. Despite the warning, she didn’t try looking up, either; dead ahead seemed about the best course of action. 

The next plank she stepped on creaked ominously. She moved a little faster to get off in case it snapped. 

The one after it gave way as soon as she put her weight on it. 

She choked back a scream as she fell forward, one leg going through the new gap in the bridge, the other just barely caught on the last plank; there was a sickening _crack_ when she hit the bridge, but none of the others split and dropped her into whatever was below her. 

For a while she lay there on the bridge, her eyes shut tight, waiting for her heartbeat to get back under control so she could actually breathe again. She was still alive. She hadn’t fallen. The planks under her didn’t feel particularly sturdy, but they hadn’t broken yet. She still had a chance. She was still going to make it. 

Slowly, carefully, she pulled her leg back through the gap and wedged her knee underneath her on the next plank. She brought her other leg forward, trying to avoid too much excess weight, and tucked that one in, too. Standing up seemed like it would be a terrible idea with no railings to grab on to, and maybe keeping her weight spread out would stop that from happening again. 

Or maybe it would ensure that when the next plank snapped, she’d fall straight through the rickety bridge into an infinite drop into what was probably hell. Crawling on her hands and knees had never been an option before, and while it was definitely appealing now, she felt a tiny flame of pride still burning against the all-consuming terror. 

She felt around for a closer plank and planted her hands flat on it, then pushed. It creaked warningly. Was it going to snap? Was the whole thing about to send her plunging down below? She couldn’t feel any cracks, but the grain might be splitting. There might be a hint on the top, a fine white line where it could give way. She had to check, or risk probably instant death. 

She opened her eyes for one second.

_“I have never truly seen what is in the void, nor have I been able to venture into it despite how easy it seems to reach. Perhaps only those not intent on finding it can stumble into it, or only those too lost and broken to follow any other path. But I have glimpsed it, and these notes have told me much about it._

_It is a place of endless wind. Of roaring, of thunder, a dust storm in a dead and dry plane of existence no man should ever hope to see. It is truly a wasteland: nothing lives, and so nothing dies, the whole place scoured by fierce gales._

_But there is still death there. The ground is littered with corpses in the hundreds, the thousands. Hollowed and dry, remnants of their clothes and skin still clinging to them, pieces of them taken up and flung by the winds along with shattered bits of wood and metal._

_I have read much and thought much, and I have found myself at a terrible conclusion, and it is this: that the void is where the Entity discards that which it no longer has use for. It casts aside those survivors among us who become broken and hopeless, unable to sate its hunger any longer no matter how often they may die; it throws down those killers that refuse to hunt us, or cannot hunt us, or have failed too often and incurred the Entity’s displeasure too many times; and it abandons those pieces of its realm where a killer no longer takes up residence, useless and burdening without a mad soul to host._

_There are bones here, and there are the ghosts of those bones, the souls as hollow as their corpses. I have seen flickers of them. Staring eyes, grasping hands, knowing, somehow, what they have suffered and what they have lost. They cannot regain their place and cannot return to the world they left, and so they seek companions in their endless, tormented misery._

_They call to me, inside my head. And I fear that if I cannot succeed in my experiments, then one day I, too, will be among them.”_

Yui forced herself to her feet, slowly rising, feeling the bridge sway slightly underneath her.

The walk to the pillar didn’t take long, but it felt endless. Her thoughts were somewhere distant, pushed to the back of her head by something she couldn’t name and very intently didn’t _want_ to name. She moved one step at a time, and none of the other planks snapped, and finally, she felt stone under her feet. 

As soon as she was off the bridge she collapsed to her knees and just tried to breathe. She’d made it this far, she told herself. She’d passed that test. She’d - she hadn’t been able to keep to the warning, but that was going to be her problem for the rest of eternity, or however long she lived; it was something she could deal with later. Right now, there was one more step to take, though at least this one probably wouldn’t kill her on the spot. 

Once she was sure she wasn’t going to throw up, Yui pushed herself up enough that she could see what was on the pedestal. Her legs were too shaky to stand, and the pedestal - nothing more than a square-shaped lump of white rock - was low enough that she could see over the top even kneeling. 

There was … a knife. At least, it looked like a knife. What it actually was, as far as she could tell, was the _shadow_ of a knife, a thin silhouette of darkness in the air that looked like it was made of black smoke. Tendrils wisped off it and disappeared. The longer she looked at it, the more she thought it looked like Ghost Face’s knife. It had the same general shape and size. The same solid rounded handle, the same style of blade, slightly curved at the tip. 

She watched it for a while. If she grabbed it, it looked like her hand would go right through it. Maybe this was all just some nasty joke the Entity was playing on her, to crush her hopes and make her realize just how pathetic and powerless she really was in this place … 

… but was that how it played the game? Their whole purpose for being there, they’d learned, was to essentially feed it, and it needed them alive and emotional to get there. The finer details were still a mystery, but small things added up over time. It wouldn’t let her get all the way out here and then crush her hopes just for a laugh. Would it? 

If it had let her find help, and let Trapper lead her here, and not just let her wander off into the fog and get lost forever or turn her back out at the campfire, it must have been willing to do _something_. Wraith had said she might be able to make a deal. Trapper hadn’t argued with the idea. Both of them had told her she’d regret it. 

For the others - for Claudette - there was nothing she could ever possibly regret. 

She grabbed the knife.  


* * *

  
It felt like she was falling. Wind rushed up beneath her, her hair streaming out, somehow visible despite the complete blackness all around her. 

Where had all the gray fog gone? The horizon? The cliff? The storms? The … _place_ she’d almost fallen into? Did it matter? She’d made her choice, and now she was getting an answer. 

She glanced over to look at her arm where it was drifting as she fell. There wasn’t a knife; when she curled her hand into a fist, her fingers closed into an empty palm. But there was … _something_ there. Flickers of black smoke around her arm and wrist, ignoring the wind to dance along her skin from second to second. They didn’t hurt. They didn’t feel at all, actually. 

In her head, she knew something had happened. There wasn’t a memory and there weren’t any words, but dreadful certainty was jammed into her skull like a nail: she’d made her deal. The Entity, unfathomable as it was, had given her a chance to strike back and send Ghost Face reeling. To cut the memories from his mind and stop him from doing whatever he was planning, stop him from being an even worse monster than he normally was - and taking everyone else’s memories of it away, too. 

Was it a good idea? Probably not. But now she was sure it might work. The image of the ghostly knife was burned into the back of her head. A knife only had one purpose out here. 

There was no point wondering why the Entity had bothered to make a deal with a survivor. It was … it wasn’t even a monster. She had no idea what it was. Nobody did. Not even the ones who’d been here the longest. 

Another thought was nailed into place, too: that he was going to try and finish things by killing her. She didn’t know where it came from, which meant it probably wasn’t supposed to be there. But it was as solid a certainty as the idea that she’d cut a deal. _He’d_ cut a deal, too, and was going to try and rip her from the Entity’s game for good. So it _would_ let them do that. She wondered what it had cost him. 

She wondered what this was going to cost _her_. 

The blackness all around her started to give way to flickers of light. The silence gave way to bursts of sound. She saw - blood. Heard screams. Unfamiliar voices. Neon lights streaking by. Someone sobbing, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. There were people running. There was a generator roaring. 

Yui thought she saw a woman more clearly than the others. Tall and bloody, her clothes flickering with unfamiliar light, half her face torn to shreds, all red flesh and white bone. In place of her eye was a bright orange light that pierced through something in Yui’s soul. 

The woman flickered out of sight and then she was stalking away, following a trail of blood. Light caught off a bloody chain wrapped around her wrist and dangling against her palm, the links twisted and spiked and vicious. 

And then … there was nothing again, nothing but silence and darkness closing in. The wind slowed. She drifted down until she stopped, hearing her heartbeat in her ears, wind in trees, and a distant rumbling that was so familiar by now she didn’t even notice it. 

Someone said her name. She opened her eyes and winced at a bright light close enough to hurt but far enough to be a mystery. A figure eclipsed it, looking down at her; she blinked a few times. 

“Yui. You okay?” 

“Jake?” 

And then it all came rushing back. _Everything_ hurt, especially her right hand. Yui swore and pushed her head back against the tree she was leaning against, trying to pull herself together. What had she just _done?_

Jake was crouched next to her, and once he saw she was in one piece, he shifted and sat down. He waited to say anything until she opened her eyes and looked at him. His expression hadn’t changed at all, or at least it didn’t look like it had; this far from the campfire, it was almost impossible to see. 

“You’re still alive.” 

“Yeah. I know. Being dead doesn’t hurt this much.” But the pain was fading fast, to her surprise. Even the sharp stabbing in her palm was ebbing away. She opened her hand and looked down; there wasn’t so much as a mark left behind. “How’d you find me?” 

“Claudette asked me to look for you. You’ve been gone for a while.” 

“It didn’t feel that long.” 

“It usually doesn’t.” 

Yui pushed herself up so she could lean forward, rubbing her forehead. There was a huge gap in her memory. She knew she’d found Trapper, and gone through the fog, and then … there had been a knife … 

“You found something.” 

“I think so.” She glanced at Jake. “I don’t know if it’s going to do the job, but it was better than nothing.” 

“If it was at the center, it probably will. As long as you use it right.” 

Her glance turned into a stare. 

“At the center?” Things clicked. “You’ve _been_ to the heart?” 

“I’ve been … around.” It was such a half-assed answer she almost grabbed him, but he was looking out into the darkness beyond them. “There’s more places out there than you’d think. I’ve run into a lot of them looking for tools or a way out.” 

“I thought that wasn’t an option.” 

“It might be.” His expression, usually so flat and cool, softened into something almost sad. “But the more I look, the more I think it’s not. Even the killers don’t know a way out.” 

“How often are you talking to them?” she asked, and watched him smile very faintly. 

“More often than I should.” He looked at her. Even at this distance, there was a flicker of firelight in his eyes. “This is going to end badly for you, isn’t it.” 

It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even framed like one. Yui watched him. She got the feeling he knew a hell of a lot more than he was letting on, but where before it would have made her slam his head into the nearest tree until he talked, now she just … felt cold. 

“I don’t care,” she said, as icily as she could. “Better it ends badly for me than he gets his hands on anybody else. I’d rather end up a fucking smear on the road than let him touch Claudette.” 

Jake didn’t respond right away. He watched her a few seconds longer, then sighed, still with that faint smile on his face. 

“At least you’ve got a good reason.” Before she could question that, the smile faded. “He got Nea while you were gone.” 

“Shit.” All the dread poured back into her at once. “I was gone that long?” 

“Yeah. She’s doing all right now. Spent the whole time cussing him out, from what I heard, but it was still bad.” 

“God damn it.” Yui tried to stand up, but her legs were still shaky, and she almost collapsed. Jake caught her arm and helped her up. “I shouldn’t have waited so long.” 

“Maybe.” His grip on her arm didn’t tighten, but it shifted down a little. She glanced over to see him looking at her, and for once, he almost looked regretful. “I’m sorry it had to happen like this.” 

“What does _that_ mean?” 

“Nothing.” He started to pull her along toward the campfire, but she stayed put. 

“Tell me.” 

He stopped, looked at her again, and sighed through his nose. A question he didn’t want to answer. Usually, this was where he just stopped paying attention, or got up and walked away. She half expected him to do that now, leaving her to stumble back to the fire on her own. 

“I … know more about this place than I’ve told anyone,” he said, like he had to dredge the words up from somewhere deep inside. “I’ve seen some of what the Entity can do to people. Not just when it kills us. Claudette said you went to make a deal with it.” He hesitated. “You might have really fucked yourself over doing this.” 

Yui looked at him. She had a thousand questions, wanted a thousand answers, but she could see something like _regret_ on his face, and on top of that he wasn’t a man for swearing much. He felt _sorry_ for her. Like he knew what was coming next. 

“I told you,” she said, more sure than she felt, “I don’t care. If it stops Ghost Face from doing all this, then it’s worth it.” 

Jake’s expression faded back into blank coolness. For a second the smile pulled at the corner of his mouth again, but then it was gone. 

“I hope you’re right,” he said, and helped her back to the campfire.


	14. Chapter 14

“Don’t be so upset,” Nea said, waving a hand like she was trying to brush off the horror that even Yui could still see lurking in her eyes. “He’s just a shithead. Trying too hard. I’m so used to getting fucked up here that he can’t even start to get to me.” 

“That’s not true and you know it,” said Dwight. 

“Whatever.” She dropped her arm and stared down at the ground between her feet with a sigh. “Let’s just move on, okay?” 

Yui knew she couldn’t move on. She was still stuck at the point where Ghost Face was making good on his promises. He was killing like the worst nightmare any of them had ever had, and he was enjoying it. 

_I’m going to open them up like Christmas presents. It’ll all be for you._

Some of the others were starting to go quiet around her. They didn’t trust her now, if they ever had before. But even that wasn’t going to help, because Ghost Face would go after anyone just because he knew she’d be wracked with guilt over it. He was doing this to get back at her, after all. He hated her so much it had reached a point of obsession. 

And she’d gone to deal with the _Entity_ in order to stop him. God, it was almost as bad as what he was doing. But at least nobody other than the two of them were going to suffer as a result. 

Next to her Claudette had an arm linked with hers, trying to keep her from going anywhere. Jake had deposited her next to Claudette when they got back into the light and murmured something to her Yui couldn’t hear, and ever since she’d refused to let go. They hadn’t spoken yet; for the moment, they didn’t need to. But eventually, she was going to ask what the plan was. 

And Yui wasn’t going to have an answer. Her memories had faded the longer she’d been out of the fog. The only things still sharp and clear were Trapper, all looming terror and glinting metal, and the mental image of the knife, all shadows and incorporeality. Everything else had turned into a dream. Half-remembered, almost real and mostly not, just out of reach if she tried to focus on them. 

The knife … there was only one thing to do with a knife around here. Why had it looked so much like Ghost Face’s? Maybe that was supposed to be ironic. Did the Entity understand irony? She was willing to put money on no, but her experiences so far told her to maybe hold on to some of it. 

And, of course, there was the fact that she didn’t actually have the knife. She knew she’d grabbed it. She remembered that much, too. Reaching out, her hand wrapping around a handle that shouldn’t have been there, and then - _nothing_. There were no marks on her palm or fingers, nothing to prove it had ever been there. Where was it? Was it just a symbol? Would she have to actually go after Ghost Face on her own, or had grabbing it been good enough? 

There were too many questions she didn’t have answers to. Yui watched the fire gloomily, half-listening to the conversations around her, and wondered what the hell was going to happen next. 

People came and went. There were trials. Claudette kept a hand on her while she was there, but eventually even she disappeared, leaving Yui on her own for a while. Nobody claimed to have seen Ghost Face. Nobody came back haunted, or at least any more haunted than usual. 

She drifted off. 

They didn’t sleep here that often. It wasn’t necessary. Sometimes, after a hard trial, they’d try to recover their energy by just lying down and shutting their eyes, but that was never really _sleep_. It was a catnap at best. The way this place worked ensured they always had just enough strength to keep going through endless, endless trials. 

And this wasn’t really sleep, either. She could still hear the conversations going on around her, if muted and distant, and the crackle of the fire was a constant. But she felt like she was dreaming at the same time. Walking through the fog again, hearing a constant rumble of thunder as distant as the voices, feeling strangely at peace. 

There wasn’t a single voice picked out from the rest, or even words turning up in her head, or spoken in her own voice. She just suddenly got the feeling that things were ending. That she had to take one final step, and be the one to end it by her own hand. The Entity was done being involved, letting her find who or what she needed and giving her chances. Now it was up to her. 

In the half-dream, she wondered if Ghost Face knew the same thing. He had to have been fighting as hard as she did to get everything he had - her hachimaki, the horrible violent deaths … and Wraith had said he’d been careless. The thing controlling this place couldn’t appreciate that. 

But he’d also made _his_ deal. And the Entity always favored its killers. Always. 

The fog started to go black around her, a little point in the distance engulfing the rest like a drop of ink in a glass of water, and then she could see the firelight again, and hear someone trying to get her attention. She opened her eyes, blinked, and saw Bill sitting on the next log over, watching her. 

“Hey.” She stared at him, unseeing for a few seconds. “You got a plan to take care of all this?” 

“I … think so,” she said, and her uncertainty didn’t seem to sit well with him. 

“That’s not good enough.” 

Yui tried not to glare at him. He was a good person, even if he was a grouchy, temperamental bastard. He didn’t like most of them but he’d go out of his way to help them, protect them, and keep them from getting killed, even at the cost of his own life. It was just that his constant suspicion of her now that she’d been partly responsible for getting people killed like they had really grated on her. 

“I know it’s not. But - look, either it’s going to work or it’s not, and either way, the problem’s going to be solved.” 

“How’s that supposed to work?” 

“Either he’ll stop or I will,” she said, flatly, and for a second his face flickered. He didn’t say anything for a while, trying to search her face for any hint of a lie, but there was nothing there. Yui knew that either she’d come out on top here, or Ghost Face would, and either way, he wouldn’t have a reason to keep his murder streak going. 

Or at least, she hoped he didn’t. The bloodlust in her snarled that no matter what happened he’d still slaughter them like they were less than animals. He was a monster. Even if he got everything he ever wanted, he’d still have a justification to kill. Hadn’t he said it himself? That sometimes the reason for killing was _because it felt right_. 

“You think he’s going to kill you.” 

“I don’t know what else he could be planning.” She shrugged with one shoulder. “I’m the problem. Getting rid of me is the solution.” 

“But you’ll come back.” 

“Maybe.” 

There really wasn’t another solution, she thought as Bill gave her one last long, suspicious and slightly uncertain look before going back to his spot by the fire. A killer like Ghost Face wasn’t going to just hurt people forever. He could hurt her, and hurt her, and she’d still be there, still be trying to stop him. He was as single-minded as the rest of them. His only possible plan could be to kill her _for good_ , without allowing the Entity to intervene and bring her back. 

He wouldn’t let her just break and lose hope and disappear. That wouldn’t be good enough for him. He’d want to kill her _himself_. She was starting to realize that she knew him better than she thought, which made her want to tear off all her skin just to get away from the idea. 

She put it down to spending too much time thinking about him, which didn’t help matters much. Trying to figure out how to stop him required trying to figure him out. There was nothing more to it. 

Nothing more. 

It was a little while before she was called to a trial, but only a few minutes in she knew it wasn’t with _him_. She heard the hollow tolling of Wraith’s bell, and felt the hair on the back of her neck lie flat again, and focused on finishing the trial, whether she got out alive or not. 

She was pulling Nancy off a hook when she saw the flickers of orange light and heard the swift tolls of the bell that brought Wraith from silent invisibility to terrifying reality. Automatic fear reared up in her, made her stumble back but stay between him and Nancy, and she braced herself to take the hit. 

As he brought up the club, she thought she saw something on his face. A flicker to his perpetually unchanging expression. 

Pity. 

The club landed and she went running, dodging around trees and over half-walls. The look burned into the back of her head and made her wonder if she’d made a mistake in doing what she had, but - there was no other option. No other choice. 

Ghost Face wasn’t going to win because she was afraid of him. 

She got out of that one alive, pushing Nancy and Ace out ahead of her. Adam had yelled at them to go and taken off running. He turned up as they were heading back to the campfire, looking dazed, but it was the normal sort of daze that came with death on a hook. 

At the fire she sat down by Claudette, who leaned against her, resting her head on Yui’s shoulder. For a while they were silent, just watching the flames, pretending the rest of the nightmare didn’t exist. 

“So what are you going to do when you find him?” she asked. 

“Confront him. Get him to tell me what his plan is.” Yui watched the logs in the campfire, wondering not for the first time how it was they never burned down. Then again, in a place where death didn’t take, keeping a fire going must have been easy. “And then … I’ll find out.” 

“That’s not a very good plan.” 

“No, but I know how it’s going to end whichever of us wins.” 

“Bill said it’s going to kill you.” 

“He told you?” She shot a glare to his spot by the fire, but he was missing. 

“Yeah. But I was going to ask you anyway.” Claudette glanced at her. “Either he’ll stop or you will, you said. And I know what that means.” 

Yui sighed. But this had to happen eventually. Claudette, of all people, had to know before it happened. She’d just been hoping she could put it off long enough to keep the worst from coming to life. 

“I don’t know exactly what I’m going to have to do, but either he’ll forget or he’ll kill me, and I don’t think I’ll come back.” 

“Then make him forget.” There was a hint of savageness to Claudette’s voice, one Yui hadn’t heard very often. “You have to come back. Even if I don’t remember kissing you, or anything else we’ve done, you still have to get back. If you don’t I’ll - ” She struggled to find the right words. “I don’t know. I won’t forgive you, for starters.” 

“I’ll come back. He hasn’t won every time before. Even if he’s completely off his rocker by now, I’ll find a way back here.” 

“Promise?” 

Yui looked over. Claudette was still pressed against her, still watching her, but her grip was like iron and there was a fear in her eyes that had nothing to do with the way this place forced them to run and hide or suffer and die. It was a fear that the two of them had made by getting too close, and risking real, incalculable loss. 

She was silent for probably too long, not wanting to lie but knowing a half-truth wouldn’t do the trick, knowing that no matter what she answered, it might not be the truth anyway. 

“Yeah,” she finally said, hoping against all the hope this place tried to steal from them that this was going to be one of the promises she didn’t break, “I’ll come back. I promise.”  


* * *

  
It was raining this time. Not hard - more a light mist, something that left skin and clothes damp, the insides of the generators slick and frustratingly hard to work with, the ground just muddy enough to slip on. A pain in the ass, in short. 

Alone among all of them, Jake knew he was probably the only one who didn’t mind. No, he didn’t like slipping and cracking his skull on an errant stack of _something_ when he was being chased by a killer, but the chill in the air and the wetness on his skin reminded him of better times. Cool, misty mornings when the sun was just about to rise, when he could sit in the hollow of a tree and watch deer pick their way through the undergrowth like speckled shadows. Evenings after a thunderstorm, when the rain was just tapering off and the sun was starting to slip through the clouds, leaving hints of rainbows in the sky. 

Crouched behind a fallen wall, he closed his eyes and tried to imagine the world before the fog. It was getting harder to do. His memory was fading out - slowly, very slowly, old thoughts going gray and insubstantial. The effects of dying over and over again, he knew, or at least suspected. The mind faded. Everything good trickled away. It was hard to hold onto even the bad things in this particular nightmare, though of course those tended to stick a lot longer. 

Then again, there were other reasons for his mind to fade away out here, but he didn’t think about those. Not if he could help it. 

Eventually he stood up and made his way through the trees to find a generator. He walked, leaving the grass undisturbed and the crows nearby unbothered; they turned to watch him, then turned away. He moved so quietly that sometimes even killers didn’t notice him, and that was the case this time, because when Ghost Face stalked across his path without looking around he almost choked. 

Jake watched him out of the corner of his eye as he made his way into the foliage around them. He was moving fast and silent, the straps on his coat trailing behind him, and … they didn’t look right. Normally they drifted lazily. Even as the bastard moved, Jake could see them twisting and writhing, jerking and then going still. 

He didn’t move just yet. Instead he thought, very hard, and very fast. Ghost Face was proving to be more dangerous and unexpected than any of them had ever thought, and he was getting more and more unhinged in trials. What Jake had picked up in his time here was that killing _was_ allowed, but only under certain circumstances; it was possible to undermine the rules, but he’d been told one thing about that: _There’s always a price._

And there was no way Ghost Face was sacrificing enough of them to compensate for the amount of killing he’d been doing. 

There were things to depend on now. They had a few minutes - five at max - to get generators done before he’d start attacking them. He had to check and see who was here. And who _wasn’t_. Yui wasn’t here right now, which was a positive, but Claudette was. And Claudette had told him Ghost Face had threatened her to her face. And to Yui’s. 

The chill mist of rain made it easy for anyone wearing dark clothes to hide. It made the fog thicker, harder to find their way through. Harder for the killer to find them, too, but not every time. Jake listened for the sound of generators, footsteps, breathing, kept an eye out for looming hooks, trying to memorize their locations in case he needed to collapse one later. 

He didn’t find Claudette, but Cheryl, who seemed familiar and unfamiliar with the place all at once. She glanced at him and tried to smile, but it looked out of place. 

“Seen Claudette?” he asked. She shook her head. 

“Didn’t even know she was here.” Jake crouched down and started working, but his attention was only half there. “It’s that Ghost Face freak again, isn’t it?” 

“Yeah.” He reached down for his toolbox before remembering he hadn’t brought it with him. 

“God, I hate that mask.” Cheryl pressed her head to the side of the generator and let out a shaky breath. “I just want to hit him with a pipe.” 

“Finish this up and you can hit him with a pallet.” 

“It’s not the same.” 

There was a yell in the distance. Not Claudette. Quentin, maybe. Cheryl looked up, clenching her jaw. 

“Go find him. I’ll finish this,” Jake told her, and she nodded, then slipped into the trees. Her white vest was visible long after the rest of her wasn’t. Not a good choice, he thought, but none of them had really dressed for a nightmare like this. He’d just gotten lucky. 

He finished the generator. There were no more screams. He heard another one finish not long after he crept away, and headed for it. If Cheryl was busy with Quentin, then it had been Claudette on that one. It left Ghost Face with a fifty-fifty chance of finding her. 

Jake knew the killers fairly well at this point - better than he should have. He knew they could get angry. Vengeful. _Deliberate._ His head still ached on and off from the trial where he’d learned sabotaging traps was no longer an option. And from what Tapp and Dwight and Nea had said, this one was no different. His intentions were, but at the end of the day, torturing someone to death was just that. 

And he knew this one wanted to hurt Yui, and he knew Claudette was closer to Yui than anyone else, and despite his mistrust for and distance from almost everyone else, Claudette was someone he’d almost call a friend. 

She didn’t deserve what was waiting for her if Ghost Face found her. 

Fortunately he found her first, hiding in heavy furze, watching out for any kind of movement. Jake slid into the darkness next to her and watched where she couldn’t. 

“He’s looking for you,” he said, and felt her shudder. 

“I know.” 

“Have a key?” 

“No. There weren’t any left.” 

“Then stick with me.” 

“How much good will that do?” 

“Dunno.” He paused, but a distant movement was just Quentin, hobbling his way to a generator. “Better than being alone, though.” 

He tugged on her sleeve and led her out of the brush toward Quentin. They patched him up in a hurry and tried to get the generator done, but they heard Cheryl screaming in the distance too soon after that - and Claudette almost immediately pulled away before remembering who was causing it. 

“I’ll go,” said Quentin. “You two stay out of his way.” 

“You’re already hurt,” she objected, but he shook his head. 

“That’s nothing new. Besides, he’ll be on the move.” And then he was gone. Jake had to put a hand on Claudette’s elbow to keep her from trying to follow. 

“I don’t want people getting hurt because of me,” she said, but there was a thread of uncertainty to it, one that Jake understood. 

“This is different.” 

“I know, but … ” 

“He’s going to do a lot worse to you than anybody else if he finds you.” 

She grit her teeth and kept working. Jake tried to keep an eye out, and saw distant movement - Quentin again, leading Ghost Face on a chase away from them. Or so he hoped. 

They finished off the generator and Jake immediately pushed Claudette away from where he’d seen the movement, and it was just in time, because seconds later Ghost Face stepped into the pool of light around it. He was staring at the ground as Jake turned back to whisper warnings to Claudette. Watching their footprints, probably. What would that tell him? 

Their shoe size. The style. He had heavy boots, the treads worn down from years of use. Quentin and Claudette had sneakers, hers smaller than his. It would tell Ghost Face who had been there - and since one of them had been running from him seconds ago, he’d know who the other was in an instant. 

It was too dark to follow their footprints very far, but all he needed was a direction. 

Jake nudged Claudette off to the side and pointed. There was another generator far enough away that she might get out of stabbing range while he kept moving just enough to lure the bastard out. She glanced that way, started to say something and stopped as he gave her a nudge and kept moving ahead in the gloom. She hesitated, then vanished in the darkness; Jake moved behind a tree and glanced back behind him. 

There was something coming his direction. Bushes and grasses shifting aside like the flicker of movement just under the surface of the water, hinting at what was heading for him. 

And … the pulsing of a heartbeat in his head, slow and steady but muted. 

He pushed down the automatic, Entity-granted fear that threatened to surge through him and took off running. 

It didn’t take long for footsteps to pick up behind him; Ghost Face had taken the bait. Jake dodged and weaved through the trees, finding corners to dart around, places to circle, walls to jump - but never any pallets. He left those standing. He wanted to distract this asshole, keep him going until they were finished - not stop him in his tracks and make him reconsider his path. 

It worked up to a point. Eventually Jake slowed, exhaustion creeping up on him, and it was enough for Ghost Face to land a swipe, the fresh pain sending him reeling over the next broken wall. He heard a snarl behind him. 

“Just _you_ ,” came a hiss through the mask, and even as he watched Ghost Face turned and stalked away, his knife still dripping blood. 

Jake clutched the broken wall and steeled himself against the pain. He could try that again, but … already the sweeping black leather had vanished into the darkness, and much as he wanted to make sure Claudette got out, running _at_ a furious killer wasn’t very high on his trial bucket list. Besides, he’d given the others decent time to get things done; halfway through he’d heard a generator go off, leaving them at two to go, with everyone still alive. 

Even as he tried to catch his breath he heard another one go off, and could only hope it was Claudette’s. He took in a shuddering breath and glanced around in the darkness. 

A crow landed on a branch nearby, watching him. He returned the favor. It didn’t call, didn’t try to alert Ghost Face to where he was - it just stayed perched, glinting eyes fixed on him. Waiting for him to do something. 

It took effort to push himself back over the wall, but by then he’d managed to force the pain into the distance. He had to make sure Claudette was still safe - and Cheryl, and Quentin, but mostly Claudette. As long as she was still here, Ghost Face wasn’t going to prioritize anyone else. 

He saw Cheryl creeping through the darkness out of the corner of his eye, heading toward one of the doors. Getting ready to run, he knew. He didn’t stop her. Even if she rushed out ahead of the rest of them, getting the door open would ensure Ghost Face was on a time limit. Even _he_ could only do so much in a few minutes. 

It didn’t take him long to find Claudette - and Ghost Face. He froze. She was hiding, only just visible even to him in the shadows around the looming, out-of-place building they’d come to call the killer’s shack. Ghost Face was inside, tearing open every locker with the kind of ferocity Jake normally saw on someone like the Hillbilly, or … 

He ducked behind a tree as he saw Ghost Face turn. A few seconds later he was still standing, so he tried to listen. There wasn’t much to hear. Ghost Face wasn’t the loudest killer, even reckless as he’d become; Jake couldn’t be sure if he was still around, or if he’d stalked into the distance, looking for someone else. 

Slowly he made his way around the tree to see the shack empty. He crept his way to Claudette, who hadn’t moved from her hiding spot, hands clutching a medkit so tight her knuckles were going white. She flinched when he touched her. 

“Let’s move.” 

“I could hear him,” she said, in barely a whisper. 

“He’s gone.” Jake tugged her up, and she got to her feet unsteadily. 

“He kept saying things. Worse things than before. I don’t know if he saw me but he knew I was here.” 

“Didn’t find you.” 

That seemed to shake her out of it, and she started moving on her own. She caught sight of the wound on Jake’s back and stopped, but he pulled her on. 

“Not yet. Let’s get to the gate.” 

“Who’s on the last generator?” 

“Not sure. Might be Quentin.” 

The walk took longer than it should have as they wound between trees and through as many shadows as they could, trying to keep from being seen - or to at least get a warning before he charged. The pain in his back was trying to push into his consciousness, but Jake forced it down again. 

The sound of the last generator finishing hit the air right as they turned toward the door, but it was followed by a scream seconds afterward. Quentin’s. Claudette glanced back out into the forest, but Jake pulled the lever on the door. 

“He’s got time,” he said, without being totally sure that was the case. “Get this open first.” 

And if they were lucky, Cheryl was at the other door, doing the same thing. Both of them listened hard for any other sounds, or more specifically, any other screams. But there was nothing. Nothing but the sirens and the clanking of the door as it slowly, too slowly, started to open. 

Right before it did the heavy bell rang out overhead and the whole world shook. Seconds later both doors were open. As he let go of the lever the pain in his shoulder made another assault and surged, making him bite through his own lip as the two of them headed for the way out. 

He couldn’t make it across the threshold. Jake collapsed onto his knees, trying not to make a sound, and then Claudette dropped down next to him. 

“Hold on. I’ve still got something left in here - ” 

“Go,” he hissed. 

“No,” she said, “we’ve still got a little time - maybe if you get fixed up, we can find - ” 

“Go!” 

But she wouldn’t. She opened her medkit, but her hands were shaking badly enough that she dropped it when she did; everything left inside rolled out, some too far away for her to reach. An empty jar of the disinfectant she made. A little roll of gauze that vanished into the grass just inside the gate. An empty syringe that used to have a shot of something strange in it that healed wounds faster than anything he’d ever seen. A little pile of bandages, knotted instead of rolled, that she just barely managed to get her hand around before it bounced away. 

“Shit.” It was the second time he’d ever heard her swear. Whatever she’d heard Ghost Face say, it had scared her - bad. 

As he waited for her to get to work, still trying to hold back the pain, he glanced up at the way out. It looked like it always did - dusty, and dirty, and freeing, the path eventually wreathed by fog. But … 

Something dragged his attention to the ground right where the threshold was. At the place where they could pass, but killers couldn’t. Bubbling up from under the dirt and dust, between the slabs of concrete, was something slick and black, almost a liquid but without any smell. 

Something clicked in his head. 

“Claudette, you have to _go_.” 

“Not yet - I’m almost - ” 

Jake punched Claudette. Not hard, not anywhere that would really hurt, but it was an instinctive move borne out of desperation. It hit her in the shoulder and sent her stumbling back, out past the threshold. She hit the ground and stared at him, more shocked than hurt, and tried to push her way back into the trial. 

There was a scream in the darkness behind him. Black spines and tendrils shot up out of the ground, blocking the way out, making Claudette jump back. She stared up at the weblike wall between them, and then back at Jake, still crouched on the ground. 

“But - Jake, you can’t get out - ” 

“There’s another door,” he managed. The pain was fighting to take control, but it was fighting years of stubbornness. “This won’t - last forever. Just go.” 

“What if he finds you?” 

“Better me than you.” 

She looked like she was ready to say something else - try to pull him through, maybe - but he saw her expression change suddenly, and he didn’t have to ask the reason why. 

Footsteps came closer, stopping abruptly not far from him. Claudette pulled herself to her feet and backed away. Jake didn’t look up. He watched Claudette as she looked between him and the figure he couldn’t see, and sighed internally when she finally, _finally_ turned and ran for it. 

Silence reigned. There was barely even a heartbeat in his head now. Running wasn’t going to get him anywhere, so he just waited to see what would happen next. There was only so much time left, after all. 

Slow footsteps brought Ghost Face level with Jake’s shoulder, and then he kicked him in the ribs hard enough to send him rolling. 

“You piece of shit,” was the snarl from above. Jake struggled to curl in, block as many weak points as possible, but there was only so much he could do when he was already injured. “You fucking ruined this for me.” 

He said nothing, just tried to shift himself away. His fingers grazed something in the grass and rubble and closed around it, the rest of his body blocking the sight from Ghost Face. 

“Want to know what that means?” 

“You were careless.” 

This time it was the knife that got him in the ribs, and he couldn’t hold back a cry at that. Ghost Face grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him a few feet away from the blocked exit. 

“It _means_ you get to take her place.” The hand around his ankle let go and grabbed him by the belt instead, finding it through his jacket. “Come on. Pick up on the cues here. I know you’ve heard what I do when I don’t get what I want.” 

Jake stayed silent as Ghost Face hefted him up onto his shoulder. The bastard kept talking, his voice more snide than genuinely pissed off, but that was probably as much him holding himself in check as Jake was. 

But as he turned to stalk back into the darkness, Jake steeled himself, and raised his hand, and brought the empty syringe down as hard as he could into Ghost Face’s back, the needle neatly cutting through the leather and slamming into a point just underneath a shoulderblade. 

He _screamed_ and dropped Jake, who took off running the second his feet hit the ground. The swearing behind him picked up in pitch and then cut off suddenly; he heard glass smash, followed by nothing. 

After that it was all instinct. He found Quentin, fighting for the last seconds of his life against the Entity, and dragged him off the hook into the shadows nearby. Overheard, he heard the tolling of the bell again. 

“There’s a door over there,” he whispered, pointing past Quentin’s shoulder. “The way out’s blocked now but it’ll be open soon. Go wait there and get out when you can.” 

“What about you?” 

“I’ll keep his attention.” 

“Is Claudette safe?” 

“Yes.” 

“Cheryl?” Quentin looked around, wincing as the hole in his shoulder pulled painfully at the move.

“Probably. Get going.” 

“But if we both go, then we can - ” 

“ _Go_ ,” snarled Jake, and Quentin reeled back, stumbling over his own feet and staring at Jake in terror for half a second before limping into the darkness beyond. 

Part of him had expected the reaction. Part of him suspected what Quentin had seen in that instant, but wasn’t sure. Regardless, it guaranteed that Quentin was going to be out of the way, and eventually safe, while Jake alone remained in the trial with Ghost Face. 

The world around him was clouding over with fog; the ground under his feet was starting to crack and glow. He crept through the growing mist until he could see swirls in it, telling him where Ghost Face was coming from, and found a wide enough tree to hide behind. If he didn’t move, he’d be a lot more difficult to find at this point. 

“You think you can save them all?” said Ghost Face, all the friendliness gone from his voice but still with a bright and brittle edge to it. “You think you can save people from _me?_ ” 

He pressed his head back against the tree bark and shut his eyes against another resurgence of pain, this time from both his back and his ribs. With a hand he tried to staunch the bleeding he could reach. 

“I’m going to find both of them eventually. I’m going to get my hands on one and then the other, and all of you are going to shit yourselves when you hear about what I’m going to do.” 

Jake tried to ignore him. Tried to tell himself they were just the disjointed, insane ramblings of someone who’d gone too far. But he’d found Yui on the edge of the forest, found her with black fog vanishing off her, and he’d explored too deep in the fog himself to be ignorant of what _that_ meant. 

“Where the fuck are you? You can’t hide forever. I know you’re still here.” Footsteps pounded against dirt and mud and leaves, rustled hard in the grass. “Get out here. Or do you want me to start telling people about what _you_ do out in the fog?” 

It was only through iron-hard self-control that Jake’s breath didn’t hitch at the words. He stared into the darkness ahead of him mutely. 

“I know,” said Ghost Face, his voice coming from everywhere as the blood loss made Jake’s whole world woozy. “I know _exactly_ why you’re out there. You’re not always looking for supplies. You’re looking for something else. Or should I say _someone_ else?” 

The bell rang out overhead again. The ground rumbled. A few crows landed in the branches of a tree nearby, watching him with interest. Jake looked at them, at the way the orange light from below glinted in their beady black eyes, and felt the pain start to ebb a little. 

“You think nobody’s watching when you creep into that mine? That nobody else knows what’s down there?” 

Distantly, he thought: why would anybody else watch? With all those traps around, waiting for someone without his patience to step into one? But the traps were out there for a reason, after all. Trespassers around the mine weren’t uncommon, or so he’d been told. 

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d keep up with that after he turned you into a pincushion, but I guess you’re just that desperate.” There was a laugh, short and hollow. Jake wondered, briefly, just _how much_ he knew, and how much he was just guessing at. 

His thoughts narrowed down to a thin line when the edge of a knife suddenly scraped against his throat. 

“Or maybe I should tell them about your little adventures in the fog,” said Ghost Face, his voice almost in Jake’s ear. “About just how far you’ve gone. All the things you’ve seen, all the places you’ve been … all the secrets you’re keeping from them. How’s that sound?” 

He didn’t wait for a response. He grabbed Jake by the hair and dragged him away from the tree, slammed him into the ground and kicked him in the ribs again; it knocked the wind out of him, left him prone, and he couldn’t do anything as Ghost Face dropped to his knees over him. 

Jake ground his teeth together against the fresh pain. He knew time was running out. He could see the sky swirling overhead, black clouds and distant orange light twisting like a tornado; under his back he could feel the ground rumbling, feel the faint heat of the bright breaks in the earth. Even if the knife came down now, Ghost Face wouldn’t be able to kill him before the trial ended. 

“Wonder how they’ll feel knowing that you don’t think they deserve to know the truth,” Ghost Face continued, not bright or brittle anymore, just flat and dead. “All the doors you’ve found that gave you the same answers. All the stories you’ve been told about what happens next. All about how _you’re_ not going where _they’re_ going when the hope runs out.” 

He didn’t respond, and Ghost Face shifted his grip on his knife. The straps on his arms were pulling at him now, hard. It was a surprise his whole body wasn’t being dragged around as they went. 

“But before I do that … I did make a promise.” He tilted his head. “Any last words?” 

“You’re too late,” Jake said hoarsely, feeling the ground shift under his back. 

“Too late?” Ghost Face echoed, and laughed shortly. “I’m _never_ too late - ” 

The claw erupted under Jake, piercing through his gut and making Ghost Face leap back or end up impaled on the same bloody black spike. The pain tore through him, made him choke out a cry, and he instinctively grabbed at it in a desperate attempt to get it out. But as the pain flattened out and became all-consuming instead of mind-numbing, he saw the other claws, the ones that traditionally closed around him and snapped his spine like it was made of glass, just barely gripping him, hovering inches from his skin. 

He stared at them, and then past them, to where Ghost Face was sprawled on the ground, watching him. There were no words, no sounds except the roaring of the wind as the trial ground started to pull itself apart and the thunder overhead as the Entity claimed its due … but Jake was still alive, if not for long. 

Overhead, the twisting, swirling nightmare parted just long enough for the huge chitinous tendrils that claimed souls to slip into view. He’d seen them before, time and again, dragging the smoky souls of the others into the sky to be … eaten, he guessed, before being returned to the campfire. That they were coming down now, before he’d even bled out, was new. 

Jake watched through slowly-fading vision as Ghost Face pushed himself to his feet, staring up at the sky intently. There were no words, no yells, no screaming, no nothing - but somehow, he got a feeling of terrible, unmanageable dread. Of a fear not his own, of a _wrath_ that wasn’t Ghost Face’s. 

Three escaped alive and him only dead because _it_ had to intervene … 

The claws descended, gleaming with sharp, deadly purpose, and then, almost smirking, Jake slipped into the grip of temporary death.


	15. Chapter 15

The sky above the wrecking yard was already starting to go more orange than green as Evan stalked through the maze of crushed cars and ruined metal. The clouds, normally thin and hazy, were getting thicker. It was a sign of something. He could imagine what. 

Philip was in the center of the yard, watching nothing. The head of his club was resting in his free hand. He barely glanced over when Evan kicked a twisted fender out of his path and found a hollowed-out car to lean against. 

“I don’t appreciate you dragging me into this,” he growled. 

“It might be worth the trouble.” 

“The hell it will be. You know how to get there. You could have showed her.” 

“I’m not interested in wandering so far into the darkness.” 

“Got no problem sending me in, though.” 

“There’s a difference. You know this.” 

Evan glowered, knowing it wouldn’t make a lasting impression. The paths through the fog were twisted and uncertain, and in some places incredibly dangerous. His estate, closer to the center of things than the rest, had less of that to deal with, but it didn’t make the insult of being made into an errand boy for a fucking _survivor_ any less frustrating. 

“Then you should have told her to find it herself.” He watched as Philip slowly turned the club in his hands, a thumb hooking one of the empty eye sockets. “If she was that dedicated, she could’ve found it herself. Without _help._ ” 

“True,” Philip agreed, “but the chance of that was low. Too low for my liking. Very few of them could have made it through there unassisted.” 

“Wouldn’t have been the first one.” 

“No. But her intent wasn’t strong enough.” He glanced at Evan, expression as flat as ever but his voice for once a little sardonic. “You should know your saboteur has a darkness in him that leads him to hidden places.” 

Evan shifted against the car, fingers curling tighter around the hilt of his cleaver, teeth suddenly grit in annoyance. 

“He’s not _mine_.” 

“He may as well be.” 

The urge to attack surged and waned as silence dragged in the wake of Philip’s little comment. There were a lot of things he could have said - another snarling denial, a caustic question about jealousy, a demand to know who the hell _told him_ \- but in the end, he choked back the frustration and ignored the whole thing. This wasn’t about the saboteur, after all, who’d found his own way to condemning himself. 

“So now she made it. You think the Entity’s going to appreciate us getting involved?” 

“Why would it hold us accountable? It loses nothing from this.” Philip looked down at the club in his hands, fingers trailing over the contours of the skull. “No matter how it ends, _he_ ties himself more closely to the Entity than even you are. Corrupted even under his own madness, his soul bound to this place … and all because he couldn’t live and let live.” 

“The hell were you expecting from him?” 

“Something less permanent.” His thumb found the other eye socket of the skull and dug in a little hard. “If he succeeds, she is simply lost. New survivors are easy to come by. If _she_ succeeds, then her soul stays darkened, and when the day comes that she can no longer hope, it will take her into hand. Or claw.” 

“You’re sure that’s the plan?” 

“I’ve seen it.” 

Evan didn’t disagree. There were other realms in the fog - layered on top of one another, just a breath away from the nightmare they lived in - and some of the other killers could reach them. He couldn’t, but Philip saw at least one clearly. It let him see the ghosts of the dead, those lingering in the killers’ footsteps and clutching at their ankles like shadows, and it let him see the survivor’s spirits as they cracked and crumbled and finally faded. 

He could see the ones that were headed for the void, and he could see the ones that were … _tainted_. Like Evan’s, or Sally’s, or his own. Evan didn’t think about it much, up until something like _this_ happened. He snorted at the thought. 

“So we get more competition.” 

“Worried?” 

“Don’t even start.” 

A rumble of thunder overhead made both of them look up. The sky was still shifting and swirling, but the sound went on and on and on. 

“Can’t believe it gave _him_ the first shot at this,” Evan grumbled. 

“He was the only one mad enough to ask and take the risk.” 

“What risk? He’s getting his damn dream come true. It didn’t stop him.” 

“It took its pound of flesh, didn’t it?” 

And even as he started to respond he knew that much was true. He’d seen the little prick on his property before, hunched over, mask in hand, vomiting blood and bile and Entity knew what else - and, yes, the Entity probably _did_ know what else - in the shadows of the trees. He wanted to take a life for good? There was a _reason_ that didn’t happen. 

“Didn’t bother him much.” 

“As if he’d admit it did.” Philip almost sneered; it was barely a flicker on his face. “He’s too in love with his own malice to recognize weakness or step back from a stupid idea. Even you wouldn’t be this foolish.” 

“You think he’ll win?” Evan asked, forcing himself to stay where he was at that little, probably unintentional, slight. 

“Do you?” 

“Hell if I know. We’ll regret it if he does. _She’ll_ regret it if _she_ does. Either way, it’ll be a shitshow all around.” 

The rumbling overhead echoed through the metal around them, making loose panels vibrate and the crows nearby take off. The two of them lingered in silence for a while, thoughts running down similar paths. 

“If she guts him, you think it’ll be a better end for her than what’s waiting now?” Evan asked. 

Philip’s expression flickered again, this time toward a fragment of something like regret. 

“I doubt it,” he said eventually.  


* * *

  
Claudette told her what had happened in the trial. Quietly, mostly in whispers, once everyone was settled and they were both certain Jake was okay. He said he was, and he was even smiling a little, so despite everything Yui figured he was telling the truth. 

And it was a good thing he was fine on his own, because what Claudette told her made her want to kill someone; she didn’t have the empathy to spare for him. 

“I’ll kill him,” she growled, digging her fingers into her palms so hard her knuckles went white. “I’ll fucking tear him in half.” 

Claudette said nothing, instead just staying pressed up against her. 

“If he thinks he can even come close to getting a hand on you, I’m going to show him how wrong he is. I’m going to get that mask off him again and shove it up his - ” 

“Is that really a good idea?” asked Meg dryly. 

“I don’t care. He deserves it. He deserves _worse._ ” Her nails dug in hard, and she had to forcibly uncurl her fingers or risk drawing blood. “I hope he’s paying for all this.” 

“Well … if what we know is right, killers don’t exactly get rewarded for letting everyone go.” 

“Jake didn’t get out.” 

“No, but he didn’t get sacrificed, either.” Meg glanced over to Jake, who nodded. He was still smiling, very faintly. 

“It wasn’t happy,” he said. 

“How could you tell?” 

“Just a feeling I got.” 

That should have made her feel better, but Yui just shook her head and glared at the fire. It wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough. It wouldn’t be enough until his brain was wiped clean of everything they’d done - or until he was dead. 

The urge to kill him was stronger than ever. The only thing tempering it was the reminder that she _couldn’t_. Even the memory of the knife didn’t give her much hope. She didn’t have it on her, after all, and even before it hadn’t seemed real. But her blood burned at the thought of him. Her skin prickled, her bones ached - she wanted him _dead_. Couldn’t the Entity get something worthwhile out of him dying? Couldn’t it - 

“You look so mad,” Claudette said, and it was like someone dumped a bucket of cold water over her, the heat and fury suddenly doused. “He didn’t get me. I’m okay.” 

“Physically, maybe.” Yui tried to pull herself back together. To act normal, for once. “But all that shit he said - you know I won’t let him do it.” 

“I know.” But she still sounded uncertain. For a second Yui thought it was because she was _doubting_ her, but then she continued. “I just … wish you didn’t have to do something dangerous to make that happen.” 

“It’ll only be dangerous until I cave his skull in and let that thing scoop the right part of his brain out.” 

“That’s what I’m worried about. Getting to him. And … ” 

“And … what?” Yui glanced at Claudette, who was watching the fire now. 

“And … what’ll happen after that.” Her grip got tighter. “Not just the forgetting. I mean … this … what’s going to happen to you?” 

“What are you talking about? Everything will be back to normal.” 

“Nothing’s that simple around here. You might … get hurt to make this happen.” 

A response was almost out of her mouth before she bit down on it. She’d asked herself that question already. _What will this cost me?_ Would she have to suffer for it? Would the Entity make her weaker? Was she going to lose hope faster than anybody else? Or would it be something less obvious, that she wouldn’t be able to recognize until it was too late? 

Carefully, she put her hand on Claudette’s thigh and squeezed. 

“I think I’ve been hurt enough. And so has everybody else. We’ve already paid for it.” 

Claudette almost smiled at that. 

“I’m not sure that’s how it works. But I hope it is.” 

And as Yui watched the flames flicker, she thought to herself that there was nothing else she could pay with. After all, the only thing this monster wanted was for them to break down. 

Right?

On the other side of the fire, Jake’s smile faded, and he turned his attention back to the fire.  
  


* * *

  
It didn’t take much longer for the final trial to start. 

The sky was pitch-black, totally devoid of anything but the huge harvest moon that looked almost nailed in place. Around her, fog and mist drifted up between dead grasses and dry cornstalks, reflecting the reddish-orange light that came from somewhere she couldn’t see. In the distance she could see a house that looked like it was one bad storm away from collapsing. 

It was the place where everything had started. The same trial ground, if a little twisted, where she’d taunted Ghost Face, grabbed his mask, and torn it off his head, setting the two of them on the path that was reaching a cliff. One of them was going to fall today. 

This _had_ to be irony. Either that, or the Entity had a strangely accurate sense for the dramatic. 

Because she knew he was here. This was a trial with Ghost Face. A chill ran down her spine as she looked around. Something in her head told her _he was here_ , and that this was going to be her last chance to stop him. If she tried to get out of here alive, or tried to let herself bleed to death before he could get a hand on her, the whole of the universe they were stuck in would grind to a halt to keep her from doing it. 

She wouldn’t, though. She’d end this here and now. Fuck the trials, fuck the Entity, fuck everything - he was going to get a metaphorical ice pick to the skull and wake up without remembering a single thing about her, other than that she was a survivor in the trials. 

And all she’d remember would be that he was one of their monsters, which meant she might make the same stupid mistake a second time, but - it didn’t seem likely. Everyone else had been here that much longer than her, save a few, and she was the first one to even try and get a mask off a killer. If she wasn’t completely stupid, she wouldn’t do it again. 

Around her there was nothing but silence. Yui stalked through trees and grass and corn, trying to find a generator. If she knew he was here, he knew _she_ was here, too, and he wouldn’t wait around. All his nasty kills had one thing in common: he wasn’t being patient anymore. He’d stalk to see if she was there, then strike and kill whoever he caught first. Even if everyone else got away. Even if he didn’t make a single sacrifice. 

That had to work in her favor, she thought, crouching down by a generator and absentmindedly getting to work. The Entity had to be pissed off about that. Favored or not, he couldn’t just fuck around as much as he wanted all the time. None of the others did. 

It wasn’t long before Jeff found her, and her blood ran cold. He’d been there when things started, too. Was Dwight here? And Kate? He gave her a nod before getting to work alongside her, totally unaware of the fear starting to cloud her thoughts. 

“Seen who it is yet?” he asked. 

“No,” she said. “But it’s Ghost Face.” 

He looked at her, hands pausing on the generator. 

“How do you - ” 

“I don’t know. But I’m sure of it.” She stared intently into the generator, not wanting to see if there was any accusation on his face. “Listen. Once he sees me, he’s not going to pay attention to any of you. You’ll be able to get out without any trouble. Just get the generators done and get everyone else out. Okay?” 

“But you’ll be stuck with him.” 

“Doesn’t matter. I’m going to end this.” 

Jeff gave her a long, long look before shaking his head and getting back to work. 

“I don’t know. I think you should get out with us.” 

“It won’t work that way!” she hissed, finally glaring at him. “I can’t explain why I know, I just _do_. And what I know is that if this goes bad you’ll all need to hurry up and get out before he decides he’s the new god around here and kills you. I don’t think the Entity’s going to intervene this time.” 

He glared right back at her. Like Claudette, he’d always tried to mediate, to keep people from turning on each other, and even now she could see it was a glare born out of concern and a burning urge to get them _all_ out alive, no matter what. But she couldn’t let him. Not now. Not this time. 

“Please,” she said. “Just trust me on this.” 

They looked at each other in silence. Jeff sighed. 

“All right,” he said. “I’ll get them out.” 

“Thanks.” 

It wasn’t long before the generator started up, the light overhead blinking on. They went their separate ways, and _still_ there was silence all around them. Another generator started by the time she found a third, but nobody had screamed yet. Nobody had so much as gotten hurt. 

What was he doing? Watching them? Watching _her?_ Waiting for just the right moment to strike? Planning it down to the tiniest detail? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But if he was just going to wait, then she was going to take advantage of that. Get the generators done, get everyone out, and then find him. 

Things would finally be over. As soon as she got to him, no matter which one of them won, it would be - 

A scream ripped through the air, making her jump and send a shower of sparks flying off the generator. It was Kate, which meant Dwight was somewhere around here, too, but that thought was secondary to the fact that her scream wasn’t a normal scream. It wasn’t a pained yelp, wasn’t a shriek as she was caught, wasn’t the sudden tearing agony of a hook through the shoulder - it was a scream of _pain_ , real pain, and terror, and desperation, and Yui knew instantly what was happening. 

She took off running. Jeff would be going, too, but she had to get there first. She even saw him, a dark shadow at her side, and yelled at him to _get back!_ He skidded to a halt, watched her run, clearly fighting with himself over whether or not to keep going. But this was her fault. Her problem. 

The screaming was still going. Ghost Face was - she didn’t even want to know. But she was going to find out. 

She rounded a corner and burst out of the corn into the trees and saw them - Kate clawing frantically at the dirt, trying to drag herself out from underneath black leather and malice and a knife that had her blood all over it. One eye was a mess. Her back was shredded. She saw Yui and for a second she reached out, trying to ask for help - 

“Run!” she choked out, as the second passed and she realized who it was in front of her, and that stabbed through Yui right past her heart and into her soul. 

Ghost Face looked up and saw her. 

“Hey, hot stuff,” he said without moving. “Thought this’d get your attention.” 

“Let - her - go,” Yui said through clenched teeth, not sure if getting closer would make things better or worse and having to fight the urge to tackle him off Kate’s back. 

“After going this far? That might be a little mean, don’t you think?” His free hand caught Kate’s hair and jerked her head back. “Think you can stagger your way out of here with this much blood loss? I doubt it.” 

The knife shifted, gleamed, and before Yui could say another word he slashed it through Kate’s throat. She choked, tried to say something else, scrabbled at the blood pouring out of the wound in her neck and then, quietly, died. 

Yui felt cold and afraid, the same way she did whenever someone died in a trial, but barreling up behind it was a red-hot rage that overpowered everything. 

“What the fuck was that for?” she snarled as he let go and leaned back. “You could have just found _me_ , you fucking asshole!” 

“Wouldn’t have been as much fun,” he said dryly, waving the bloody knife carelessly. “I figured I’d give you some time to get cozy before I ruined everything. Besides,” he said, pushing himself up, “she helped start this. I thought she could help finish it, too.” 

She stared at him as he stood. Same leather coat. Same bone-white mask, splattered with fresh blood. Same razor-edged knife, but he hadn’t bothered to clean it off yet, and as she watched he still didn’t do it. 

He tilted his head at her. The straps that forever floated off the arms of his coat were … moving strangely. They jerked from time to time, as if fighting against something. And his stance was different. Instead of casual and vicious, ready to go from an idle relaxed slouch to a lunging stab, he was standing up straight, his feet planted on either side of Kate’s body, his arms hanging loosely. 

“Admiring the view?” he said, and if one thing hadn’t changed, it was his voice. Still as snide as ever, as taunting, as bordering-on-normal as any of the killers ever got, which only made things worse. Yui sneered at him. 

“You don’t deserve to have an ego that big.” 

“Sure I do. Not many people get away with killing like I do.” He stepped toward her; she refused to move. “They always get caught. Or they’re careless, and they get killed. _They_ don’t deserve an ego.” 

Another generator went off in the distance. He didn’t even turn his head. 

“Plus, I’m about to do something that _really_ earns me the right to brag,” he continued, and suddenly there was a bright, brittle edge to his voice, one that didn’t sound entirely right. “This place is a shitshow. All these deaths, and none of them ever stick. People just don’t _die_ here. It’s a pain in the ass, you know? You can’t really make a mark. The only time somebody doesn’t come back is if they’re useless.” 

She’d been right. He was going to try and kill her for good. It was the only possible end goal for him. The only question was how he planned to do it - and if the Entity was going to allow it. 

He couldn’t be this confident unless he knew for dead certain that it _would_. And in the back of her mind, she knew that, too. Kate’s dead body on the ground said as much. She hadn’t been on a hook even once, and now … 

“I didn’t mind too much until you decided to fuck around.” He kept moving toward her. The knife was still at his side, but that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a threat. “Ever since then, I’ve had a little … _itch_ that I can’t scratch. Killing you, killing your friends, trying to fuck around with you - none of it did the job. Helped a little, but not enough.” 

“I’m sorry I ruined your mass murder experience,” she said icily. 

“You _should_ be.” His voice suddenly dropped to a hiss, like someone turning off a lightswitch. She hadn’t expected it, and had to fight the urge to back away. That would just start a chase and he _would_ outrun her. “Do you know what kind of shit I have to put up with for not doing things the right way? Do you know what’s going to _happen_ if this keeps going? Of course not.” 

He stopped less than a foot away from her. More than close enough to kill her, but all he did was loom. She glared up into the mask, waiting for his next move, ready to jerk back or try to dodge away, even if it ended up being completely useless. 

“Not that you should.” His tone lightened a little. “No, that would just give you more … I can’t say hope, but maybe _satisfaction?_ And that would just be unfair to the rest of us.” 

How likely was it that she could punch him while he was talking without getting stabbed? If she could get him to the ground, she might be able to wrench the knife out of his hand and at least get it away from him. From there, she _might_ be able to beat him into a pulp again, even if this was a trial ground. Somehow, unlikely as it seemed she would succeed, _trying_ didn’t seem so impossible anymore. 

“Shut up and tell me what you’re planning.” 

“Why should I?” 

“Because you want to.” She folded her arms across her chest, which allowed her to protect her heart without having to look like she was afraid of him. “All those kills, all that pain - you’re not going to just build up to it and then do it without making sure I know exactly what it was all for. You said you wanted it to be a surprise? Well, here we are. Surprise me.” 

He looked at her for a few seconds in total silence, and then he dropped his knife. 

Yui watched it fall. 

Just before it hit the ground, she realized it wasn’t the knife she was used to seeing. That one had a curve at the tip of the blade; this one was flat all the way to the end. It didn’t look like the one that had floated, shadowy and insubstantial, in the one solid memory she had of her trek to the heart of the fog. 

She looked up in time to see his fist coming for her jaw. 

There was no time to dodge. She braced herself instead, turned her head, and the blow hit without as much force as he’d probably intended, but there was still an explosion of pain and she staggered. He followed it with a tackle. 

Yui hit the ground hard, but by then the shock of seeing him throw away his weapon had passed and a fistfight was something she could handle. They’d done this before, and in the end - well, she’d won that, but only after she’d given into an impulse and he’d been distracted and weak. This time she wasn’t going to get that chance. What she _did_ have was the concentrated memory of everything that had led up to this point, and she let that power her. Let the rage and bloodlust and hatred for him give her a strength she shouldn’t have had in a trial. 

What _he_ had was a burning drive to see her dead, and despite the Entity apparently allowing her to fight back for once, he still had a lot more physical strength than she did. And padding thanks to the coat. And a mind that had crossed over the sanity horizon so fast it was still accelerating, which meant that he’d probably keep coming at her even if she managed to get a hand on his knife and put it in his throat. 

They fought like wild, rolling over and over in the dirt, each of them trying to get the upper hand. As they went, she heard first the fourth and then the final generator start. A part of her knew Jeff was going to take one last chance to try and find her before he opened the doors, so she had to finish this _now_ , before he tried to intervene and Ghost Face killed him, too. 

She landed an elbow in his throat. He choked and punched her in the stomach, hard enough to make her want to throw up. He brought up both hands in a fist; she grabbed the front of his coat, locked her knees around one of his legs, and rolled him again, smashing his head into the ground as they fell. Her nails clawed at his mask. His heel dug into her ankle hard enough to force something out of place. 

It was a flurry of punches, attempted kicks, knees wherever she could land them, elbows to the face - it was hard to stop him when she wanted to go for the eyes but his stupid mask was keeping him safe. He was aiming for her head more than anywhere else - head and stomach, trying to stun her, to keep her from fighting back. She fought all the more wildly to try and keep him down. She had no restrictions. She’d hit anything to stop him. It was just bad luck that so much of him was covered up. 

“Should have ripped your balls off ages ago,” she snarled at him, and when he tried to grab her by the throat she bit at him, missing his fingers by a sliver. 

“You’d have regretted _that_ more than you ever regretted fucking me,” he said, voice caught somewhere between snide disdain and cold, uncontrollable hatred. One hand lashed out and caught her by the hair, yanking her head to the side, making her yelp and then he hit her in the throat as hard as she’d ever hit him. 

It hurt more than she’d expected, and it stunned her. He rolled them again, slamming her into the dirt, setting himself over her hips to keep her pinned. Her hands were still free, but when she tried to grab at him he grabbed her wrist and twisted it as hard as he could until there was a _snap_. 

Yui had broken her wrist before, but somehow the sheer deliberate force made it hurt a hell of a lot more than normal. 

“That’s it. Scream. So the rest of them can hear it,” he said, and she cut herself off, choking back the agony before it got the best of her. White lights exploded in her vision. He dropped her arm and looked down at her, shoulders heaving, trying to catch his breath. 

She watched him reach to his thigh, where the sheathe for his knife was tightly strapped into place. He flicked a strap and pulled out the knife she knew better than she wanted to. Same rounded hilt, same curve at the tip - but the blade was cracked now. 

Along every broken line was a glimmer of orange light. She swore she could hear a whisper in the air, and there was a stink, a _reek_ , of something foul she couldn’t name. Ghost Face was laughing breathlessly as he held it up where they could both see it. 

“You want to know what I’m going to do?” he said, dark delight dripping off every word. “I’m sure you’ve got an idea by now. I worked hard. I made plans. I _suffered_ , and trust me, Yui, I don’t suffer easily. And thanks to all that, our illustrious spider god is giving me a chance to do something none of its other pet killers have ever done.” 

She watched the knife instead of him, the way it glinted orange both from the light off the cracks and the light from the moon. The fear was there, but distant and muted, like she was watching someone else be afraid, and she could feel a tickle on her good arm where it lay by his knee, making its way up to her wrist. 

The world shook and roared suddenly, a heavy bell tolling out overhead. The doors were open. Jeff was probably going to come looking for her now, unless he was smart. She hoped he’d listen to her and just _leave_. 

“I’m going to kill you,” he went on, his mask never looking away from her face. “And you’re not coming back. You’ll be out of my head. Done and gone and right where you belong for doing what you did. It might not hurt as much as I’d like it to, but you can’t have everything.” 

So she’d been frustrating him. As much as he’d been pissing her off, maybe more. Funny how something as small as getting his mask off could have turned into an avalanche like this. The tickle on her arm was getting more intense now, collecting at her wrist, crawling onto her palm. 

“It’s given me the chance to wipe you out of existence. Nobody else will ever get that.” He laughed. It sounded so real, so genuine and almost normal it was offensive. “How’s that for deserving of an ego? Even his best don’t get this.” 

“It’ll cost you,” she whispered. The feeling in her palm was getting more solid now; her fingers curled around a hilt that felt hot and cold at the same time. 

“So what?” The bell overhead tolled again. The ground underneath them was starting to crack and glow, fog venting up through the splits in the earth. “Around here, what could that possibly mean for me? Less gifts? More required sacrifices instead of the freedom to kill? Who cares? I’ll be the most dangerous. The most terrifying. They’ll all know that. And I’ll make sure they know _why_.” 

He leaned in, voice dropping to a low, nasty hiss. 

“And I want you to know something,” he said. “So it’s fresh in your mind while you die. I never did get a chance to kill your little girlfriend. So guess what?” 

Yui stared at him, letting the horror show, the anger, the disbelief and hatred and real, uncontrollable regret as it surged through her. 

“The next time I see her, I’m going to make good on my promise to you. I’m going to hurt her so bad she begs me to kill her for good. And I’m going to make sure she knows it was _all your fault_.” 

He saw the look on her face, and he laughed again, leaning back, bringing the knife up as he went. 

“She’s going to hate you for the rest of her life,” he said. 

Yui brought her arm up and stabbed him. 

The knife was incorporeal: half real, half not, mostly fog and hatred and whatever powered the Entity. It went through the leather and skin and muscles and bones and straight into his heart, or the heart of whatever was left of his soul, and slammed into it. 

It shouldn’t have done anything. It shouldn’t even have had an edge. But as soon as her fist hit his chest Ghost Face froze, and looked down, and saw the black fog swirling around her hand and wrist. 

The bell tolled again. He dropped his knife; it hit the ground as harmlessly as the last one, and his gloved fingers closed around her wrist. She opened her hand and yanked it back, but the ghostly remnants of the knife stayed right where they were. 

He tried to grab at the blade. His fingers went right through it. He clawed at his chest wildly, desperately, frantically trying to get it out, but the fog was seeping out from an invisible wound, crawling up his coat and hood, leaving sooty trails on his mask. 

Yui watched in shock as he reeled back and tried to squirm out of his own skin. She looked at her hand and saw the same black fog gently curling around her, creeping down over her arm. It wouldn’t be long before it got to the rest of her. 

But she only turned back to watch him instead. He might have been screaming, swearing, trying to escape the Entity’s grasp, but he wasn’t going to pull it off. The black fog was coiling around him, tendrils mixing with what was coming up from the ground and wrapping him up as tightly as the claws that killed them if they couldn’t escape from a trial in time. She could tell, somewhere in the heart of her, that he was going to pay, and lose all the memories of what had happened between them. 

And so would she. But that meant she’d won. 

Overhead the sky split with a crack of thunder so loud it made the ground shake, and then the whole world tore itself apart.  
  


* * *

  
She was falling again. The endless, depthless blackness swallowed her, cradled her, and dragged her down into nothingness. 

There was sound somewhere in the emptiness. Someone yelling. A man screaming. A woman asking - no, _begging_ \- for help. Running footsteps, faster than they should have been able to go. Metal rattling against metal. People in terrible, terrible pain. 

Yui could feel the memories sliding out of her head as she went, but that was fine. That was the whole point. He couldn’t remember, and neither could she, and neither could anybody else. Otherwise things would start again. He’d come after her twice as bad as before, furious and more violent than he’d ever been. 

The empty gaps left behind as each flicker of color and sound faded away started to fill themselves in, tying one moment to the next. Human minds could do that, she remembered hearing once. A traumatic memory, or a missing one, could end up completely rewritten so the body it was housed in could actually go on with the rest of its life. Nothing would have changed. Nobody would notice. 

She blinked, and saw a flicker of orange light. The black smoke that had engulfed her had mostly faded, but it was still collected around her right wrist, glinting orange; it trailed into the darkness, and all she could see it by was the occasional light. It looked like a rope, maybe. Or a chain, bent and spiked and vicious. 

As she watched it, there wasn’t so much a voice in the back of her head as a presence, a memory of words never spoken: _death is only the beginning. Let the price be paid._ It made perfect sense, and then it faded, the understanding slipping away from her like a mist at dawn. 

Darkness gave way to gray. The fog surrounded her, let her drift down gently instead of falling to her death, and slowly, as her mind settled, she could see the light of the campfire again. She could feel the solidness of the log under her, the weight of gravity as it pulled at her instead of letting her drift almost freely. The lack of any kind of pain, except for the memory of it. 

As the world came back into focus around her, she felt the last of something disappear from her mind, leaving her uncertain and vague about what had just happened. Time moved strangely in the fog. People could be gone for a few minutes and come back complaining of something that dragged on forever, or disappear for what must have been hours at a time while others came and went in the interim but claim it had only been one trial they were in. Being uncertain about what had happened and _when_ they’d happened wasn’t new. 

Still … she felt more unsure than usual. Like there were gaps in her memory. She got the feeling that _something_ had happened, and something big. There was a definite hole somewhere in her mind that she couldn’t quite fill. Probably something nasty with a killer, so nasty her brain had shut down to block it out. Maybe she’d gotten lost in the fog. That had happened to the others before, and most of them couldn’t remember what had happened, either. 

That must have been it, she decided, and rolled her shoulders, trying to get the ache out of them. Her wrist throbbed with half-remembered agony; she rubbed it, annoyed, and saw that her hachimaki wasn’t wrapped around her arm anymore. 

She stared at the empty space. But … that’s right. She’d taken it off, and given it to Claudette. As … an apology, maybe, or … no, that wasn’t right. She remembered a kiss. One Claudette had started out of desperation in the wake of a trial. They’d finally gotten up the courage to confess, though not quite through words, and now Claudette was holding onto the hachimaki for her, for luck, and just in case it came in useful. 

She looked up a little and saw Claudette looking at her, half-smiling. 

“You okay?” 

“Yeah. I’m just … a little dazed.” 

“Doesn’t surprise me. Only Jeff and Dwight got out of that trial. Ghost Face got you and Kate, he said.” Her smile turned into a look of concern. “Was it bad?” 

“I don’t know.” She felt at her ribs, where that particular asshole usually slid his knife at least once during any kill, but didn’t feel any pain. “I don’t think so. I must have hit my head or something. The whole thing’s fuzzy.” 

“Well … better than remembering it too clearly.” Claudette shrugged, and reached over to put a hand on her leg. It was a reassuring touch, familiar and comforting, and Yui couldn’t help but put her own hand over hers in turn. “Just relax for a little while.” 

So off a trial with Ghost Face? What a shithead. A stalker who took way too much joy in his work here. Just the thought of him made her grind her teeth together and raw anger surge through her. If he killed Kate _and_ he killed her, then the next time she saw him, she was going to stab him in the throat when he picked her up. 

Her hand trembled at the thought. She closed it into a fist and looked around at the others. They were all in little, personal conversations, or staring into the fire, or trying to make sure a toolbox or a medkit was stocked for the next trial. It was as normal as it ever was. Everybody was occupied … 

… except Jake, who was staring at her across the fire, his eyes fixed on her face and his expression as distant as ever. 

Yui stared back, raising an eyebrow in question, when a thought dropped into her head courtesy of nothing: _he knows._

Where the thought had come from and what it meant were complete mysteries to her. But the longer she looked at him, the longer her uncertainty about what had happened grew, casting fresh doubt on her assumptions. He knew … something. And it was something she knew, too, but it was something she couldn’t remember at the moment. 

Maybe she’d have to talk to him about it later. He looked like he might actually answer a question for once. Normally he kept to himself, rarely ever participating in a conversation unless it involved a way to get around a killer. Somehow, she suspected things would be different this time. 

He looked away, back into the fire itself, leaving Yui to her own thoughts. They didn’t quite line up right. 

But there was probably another trial starting soon, and with her luck she’d be first in line for it. She shifted her grip so she could slide her hand under Claudette’s, squeezed tight, and leaned her head on Claudette’s shoulder with a sigh. She let her uncertainties and worries drift off, feeling the warmth against her cheek alongside the comforting familiarity of the campfire in front of her, and ignored the feeling that from now on every step she took would be one more forward in a sea of endless black fog leading to a strange but somehow familiar horizon from which there was no return.  


* * *

  


_”There are those of us who have crossed a line to learn too much, and now the price must be paid. The Entity takes, endlessly, and even those who kill must give endlessly; there is no freedom here, not even in death._

_I can feel the taint deep within me, leading me through stars both recognizable and not, to the other side of this place where I may become a man that I despise. I must hurry my experiments. I must find a way out. To feel this is to know a fate awaits that may be worse than death; even the endless expanse of the void might be a better option. I am not a good man, and I have done terrible things in my time, but this will make me unforgivable. I will be that which hunts me. I will be among the worst of them._

_There is no more time to waste. I must finish my work before the beast claims its due.”_  



End file.
